File:Enceladus Water Emission Spectrum (NIRSpec IFU) (52937809204).png
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[edit]DescriptionEnceladus Water Emission Spectrum (NIRSpec IFU) (52937809204).png |
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s exquisite sensitivity and highly specialized instruments are revealing details into how one of Saturn’s moon’s feeds a water supply to the entire system of Saturn and its rings. Enceladus, a prime candidate in the search for life elsewhere in our solar system, is a small moon about four percent the size of Earth. New images from Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) have revealed a water vapor plume jetting from the southern pole of Enceladus, extending out more than 20 times the size of the moon itself. The Integral Field Unit (IFU) aboard NIRSpec also provided insights into how the water from Enceladus feeds the rest of its surrounding environment. Enceladus orbits around Saturn in just 33 hours, and as it does, it sprays water and leaves behind a torus—or ‘donut’—of material in its wake. This torus is depicted in the top diagram in light blue. Webb’s IFU is a combination of camera and spectrograph. During an IFU observation, the instrument captures an image of the field of view along with individual spectra of each pixel in the field of view. IFU observations allow astronomers to investigate how properties—composition in this case—vary place to place over a region of space. The unique sensitivity of Webb’s IFU allowed researchers to detect many lines of water originating from the torus around Enceladus and the plume itself. This simultaneous collection of spectra from the plume and the torus has allowed researchers to better understand their close relationship. In this spectrum, the white lines are the data from Webb, and the best-fit models for water emission are overlaid in different colors–purple for the plume, green for the area central to the moon itself, and red for the surrounding torus. Learn more: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/webb-maps-surprisingly-... Credits: Science: Geronimo Villanueva (NASA-GSFC). Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Leah Hustak (STScI) Image description: Infographic titled “Saturn’s Moon Enceladus; Water Emission Spectrum.” The infographic shows a diagram of Saturn, Enceladus, and its torus at the top, the NIRSpec image of Enceladus at the bottom left, and the spectra of the NIRSpec field of view at the bottom right. In the top diagram, Saturn is at the center, and the torus circles the planet like a donut. The square box around Enceladus within the torus in the top graphic has lines drawn to it from a box at the bottom left. In this box is the Webb NIRSpec image of Enceladus, with the torus, moon, plume and central areas labeled. These labels correspond to the 3 different horizontal lines on the plot. There are blue vertical columns scattered across the plot indicating where spikes in the line emissions represent the presence of water. |
Date | |
Source | Enceladus Water Emission Spectrum (NIRSpec IFU) |
Author | NASA's James Webb Space Telescope from Greenbelt, MD, USA |
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This image was originally posted to Flickr by James Webb Space Telescope at https://flickr.com/photos/50785054@N03/52937809204. It was reviewed on 6 June 2023 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0. |
6 June 2023
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