File:Enceladus Plume (Webb -NIRSpec- and Cassini Image) (2023-112).tiff
Original file (1,500 × 1,500 pixels, file size: 870 KB, MIME type: image/tiff)
Captions
Summary[edit]
DescriptionEnceladus Plume (Webb -NIRSpec- and Cassini Image) (2023-112).tiff |
English: An image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) shows a water vapor plume jetting from the southern pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, extending out more than 20 times the size of the moon itself. The inset, an image from the Cassini orbiter, emphasizes how small Enceladus appears in the Webb image compared to the water plume.
Webb is allowing researchers, for the first time, to directly see how this plume feeds the water supply for the entire system of Saturn and its rings. By analyzing the Webb data, astronomers have determined roughly 30 percent of the water stays within this torus, a fuzzy donut of water that is co-located with Saturn’s “E-ring,” and the other 70 percent escapes to supply the rest of the Saturnian system with water. Enceladus, an ocean world about four percent the size of Earth, just 313 miles across, is one of the most exciting scientific targets in our solar system in the search for life beyond Earth. A global reservoir of salty water sits below the moon’s icy outer crust, and geyser-like volcanoes spew jets of ice particles, water vapor, and organic chemicals out of crevices in the moon’s surface informally called ‘tiger stripes.’ NIRSpec was built for the European Space Agency (ESA) by a consortium of European companies led by Airbus Defence and Space (ADS) with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre providing its detector and micro-shutter subsystems. |
Date | 30 May 2023 (upload date) |
Source | Enceladus Plume (Webb (NIRSpec) and Cassini Image) |
Author | Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Geronimo Villanueva (NASA-GSFC) Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) |
Other versions |
|
Licensing[edit]
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA, ESA and CSA. NASA Webb material is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that only NASA, STScI, and/or ESA/CSA is credited as the source of the material. This license does not apply if source material from other organizations is in use. The material was created for NASA by Space Telescope Science Institute under Contract NAS5-03127. Copyright statement at webbtelescope.org. For material created by the European Space Agency on the esawebb.org site, use the {{ESA-Webb}} tag. |
File history
Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.
Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
current | 16:46, 30 May 2023 | 1,500 × 1,500 (870 KB) | OptimusPrimeBot (talk | contribs) | #Spacemedia - Upload of https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01GYJ8KNFKX79X3WFF880Z7XQF.tif via Commons:Spacemedia |
You cannot overwrite this file.
File usage on Commons
The following page uses this file:
Metadata
This file contains additional information such as Exif metadata which may have been added by the digital camera, scanner, or software program used to create or digitize it. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file. The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong.
Author | Space Telescope Science Institute Office of Public Outreach |
---|---|
Copyright holder | Public |
Width | 1,500 px |
Height | 1,500 px |
Bits per component |
|
Compression scheme | LZW |
Pixel composition | RGB |
Orientation | Normal |
Number of components | 3 |
Number of rows per strip | 58 |
Horizontal resolution | 72 dpi |
Vertical resolution | 72 dpi |
Data arrangement | chunky format |
Software used | Adobe Photoshop 23.5 (Macintosh) |
File change date and time | 09:56, 21 April 2023 |
Exif version | 2.31 |
Date and time of digitizing | 11:46, 12 January 2023 |
Color space | sRGB |