As it whips around Saturn, the moon and its jets are basically spitting off water, leaving a halo, almost like a donut, in its wake,” Villanueva said. “The orbit of Enceladus around Saturn is relatively quick, just 33 hours. The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope's detection of water vapour at Comet Read is a major benchmark in the study of main belt comets, and in the broader investigation of the origin of Earth's abundant water. This is significant, as the sublimation is what distinguishes comets from asteroids, creating their distinctive tail and hazy halo, or coma. This artist's concept of Comet 238P/Read shows the main belt comet sublimating-its water ice vapourising as its orbit approaches the Sun. Webb’s detailed detection of the plume revealed that the water vapor was releasing from Enceladus at about 79 gallons (299 liters) per second - enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool in a couple of hours, which would take more than two weeks on Earth using a garden hose, according to the release. Although the global ocean exists beneath an ice shell, the moon’s rocky core may warm the ocean enough to make it habitable for life, if it exists there. But it’s one of several intriguing ocean worlds in our solar system where scientists think they have the best chance of finding life beyond Earth. “The water plume extends far beyond its release region at the southern pole.”Įnceladus is a tiny moon, only about 4% the size of Earth and measuring 313 miles (503.7 kilometers) across. It was just so shocking to detect a water plume more than 20 times the size of the moon,” said lead study author Geronimo Villanueva, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement. “When I was looking at the data, at first, I was thinking I had to be wrong. The inset image, taken by the Cassini orbiter, shows how small Enceladus appears compared with the water plume. The James Webb Space Telescope captured a a water vapor plume jetting from the south pole of Enceladus.

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