The James Webb Space Telescope has spied on Saturn’s big Moon, Enceladus, and found water vapour plumes erupting from the surface. The plumes are over 9,000 kilometers in length, giving a unique view of the source, which was not seen before. This is the first time that astronomers have directly observed water emissions from the Moon around Saturn over such an expansive distance. Nasa said that the observation could reveal how this emission feeds the water supply for the entire system of Saturn and its rings. Previously, observatories have mapped jets thousands of kilometers from the moon’s surface, but “Webb’s exquisite sensitivity reveals a new story”.
“When I was looking at the data, at first, I was thinking I had to be wrong. It was just so shocking to detect a water plume more than 20 times the size of the moon. The water plume extends far beyond its release region at the southern pole,” lead author Geronimo Villanueva, said in a statement.
Enceladus, the moon around Saturn, is an ocean world and is nearly four percent the size of Earth with a diameter of just over 500 kilometers across. The moon holds a reservoir of salty water, which is sandwiched between the moon’s icy outer crust and its rocky core. “Geyser-like volcanos spew jets of ice particles, water vapor, and organic chemicals out of crevices in the moon’s surface informally called ‘tiger stripes,” Nasa said.