Family Portrait Planets


Beneath The Icy Crust Of Enceladus. The research paper written by scientists with the Cassini mission, published in the journal Science, suggests the presence of hydrogen gas. Hydrogen gas, that could potentially provide a chemical energy source for life, is pouring into the subsurface ocean of Enceladus from hydrothermal activity on the seafloor of this bewitching, distant moon-world. We earthlings love to look up at the moon. So much does the moon enamor us; we write movies, songs and poems by the droves that contain the name of the earth's super satellite. A case in point is the fact that one of the biggest selling record albums of all time is Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon." The team of astronomers used the same HST technique to observe the little moon as they did for discovering the small moons of Pluto in 2006, 2011, and 2012. Several earlier hunts around Makemake had not succeeded in spotting it. "Our preliminary estimates show that the moon's orbit seems to be edge on, and that means that often when you look at the system you are going to miss the moon because it gets lost in the bright glare of Makemake," commented Dr. Alex Parker in an April 28, 2016 Hubble Press Release. Dr. Parker, who led the image analysis for the observations, is of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.