It's Enceladus! An amazing moon of Saturn that we've learned a ton about in the past ten years, thanks to the wonderful Cassini probe. It's the brightest object in the Solar System for starters (apart from the Sun, of course). Why? Because it's completely ice and highly reflective. But see those blue stripes at the bottom?
The so called "Tiger Stripes" are areas on the Southside of the moon where the ice crust is weakened, allowing liquid water to rise to the surface. Liquid water, you say, that far out into space?! But it's so cold! True, but thanks to tidal friction caused by the massive Saturn and the other moons around it, Enceladus is squeezed and stretched with every orbit and this creates enough friction within the moon to generate heat. Heat enough to not only create a global subsurface ocean, but warm enough to create CRYOVOLCANOES.
Like Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park, geysers. But on a scale far, far bigger - these geysers, or water volcanoes, shoot an enormous amount of water into space, where it instantly freezes. Some falls back onto Enceladus, creating new layers of ice crust. The rest goes into orbit around Saturn, creating the "E Ring":
As seen here. Amazing, yes? And so we begin our tour of the Solar System's moons. Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting moon(s)!
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