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APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Saturn's Cleanest Moon: Enceladus
Explanation: Enceladus orbits Saturn between the smaller Mimas and the larger Tethys . Enceladus is composed mostly of water ice and has the cleanest and purest ice surface in the Solar System . It's surface therefore appears nearly white. The surface also has many unusual groves and relatively few craters, like Jupiter 's moon Ganymede . This indicates that the surface is young and/or newly reformed. To explain this, some astronomers speculate that Enceladus is susceptible to some sort of volcanic activity. Enceladus was originally discovered in 1789 by William Herschel .
| Date | November 25, 1995 |
|---|---|
| Credit | Credit: NASA, JPL, Voyager 2 |
| Authors & editors: | Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) |
| A service of: |
ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. |