Saturn has 62 moons. One of them is Enceladus, which on first glance doesn’t look like much – kind of like a huge galactic golf ball. But this small moon, about the size of England, is a lot more interesting that you might imagine. Enceladus provides almost all of the material that makes up Saturn's E Ring.
"It turns out that this whole ring is material that came, ultimately, from the moon itself," says astronomy contributor, Jean Creighton.
Cracks on the moon's surface allow frozen liquids to escape into the atmosphere. It creates 100-yard snow drifts on Enceladus. "And some of that can travel so quickly, that it escapes Enceladus' pull, mild pull, entirely."
Creighton is the director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at UW-Milwaukee, and our regular astronomy contributor.
