Source Found: Saturn Gets Rained Water from Moon Enceladus!

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Saturn Receives Rain From Moon



http://www.thirdage.com/news/saturn-rec ... 07-26-2011


Saturn and its source of water in the planet's upper atmosphere has long been a mystery that scientist's have tried to solve. But according to EarthSky, European astronomers have found the answer, as they discovered the moon Enceladus rains down on Saturn.



The European Space Agency's Herschel space observatory made the discovery, making Enceladus the only moon in the Solar System known to influence the chemical composition of its parent planet.

In an ESA report released on Tuesday, scientists found that nearly 500 pounds of water ejected every second from jets in the south polar region of Enceladus create a huge doughnut-shaped torus of water vapor surrounding Saturn.



Paul Hartogh of the Max-Planck-Institut in Germany, who led the analysis of the Herschel results, told EarthSky, “ There is no analogy to this behavior on Earth. No significant quantities of water enter our atmosphere from space. This is unique to Saturn.”

Until now, the torus has escaped detection because water vapor is transparent to visible light but not at the infrared wavelengths Herschel was designed to detect.


Most of the water from Enceladus is lost into space, freezes on the rings or falls onto Saturn’s other moons. But the portion that does fall into the planet's atmosphere is enough to explain the water previously observed.



The water in Saturn’s upper atmosphere is transported to lower levels, where it will condense but the amounts are so tiny that the resulting clouds are not observable.

The rain from Enceladus is the cause of the production of additional oxygen-bearing compounds, such as carbon dioxide, as well.