The upper layers of Saturn’s atmosphere are filled with water that, until now, was unknown where it came from. Now, thanks to the powerful space telescope of theEuropean Space Agency(ESA) Herschel, scientists have been able to discover that the water comes from one of its moons, Enceladus.
This fantastic fact implies that, so far, this famous moon of Saturn is the only one in the solar system that would have an influence on the chemistry of the planet on which it revolves . And, as astronomers have discovered, the water is expelled from this natural satellite that orbits about four radii from the planet and forms a ring of vapor that surrounds it.
To be more exact, Enceladus expels about 250 kilos of water vapor every second through a series of jets that are born at the south pole. These jets are known as “Tiger Stripes”, because of the marks they leave on the surface of the moon.
In this way, the steam jets, when they reach the upper part of Saturn’s atmosphere, create a donut-shaped structure known as a torus and that surrounds the planet. This torus is more than ten times the radius of the sixth planet in the solar system, although its thickness is barely one radius of Saturn .
The water that Enceladus expels also explains the amount of water detected on the planet’s surface. Of the total, a part is lost in space, another is frozen in the rings of Saturn, another reaches the other moons of the planet and, as explained by ESA, “the small fraction that falls on the planet is enough to explain the water detected in the upper part of the Saturnian atmosphere “.
Could it happen on Earth?
As explained by the director of the team responsible for analyzing the results, belonging to the Max Planck Institute in Katlenburg-Lindau, Paul Hartogh, ” there is no comparable phenomenon on Earth, this only happens on Saturn “, further explaining that “in our atmosphere no amounts of water arrive from space “, neither from the Moon nor from any other celestial body.
Until now, this phenomenon had not been observed because water vapor is transparent to visible light. Thanks to Herschel’s infrared detection, it has been possible to see where the water came from and end with 14 years of unknowns about it.
