Astronomy Picture of the Day

Explanation: Do oceans under the ice of Saturn's moon Enceladus contain life? A reason to think so involves long features -- some dubbed tiger stripes -- that are known to bespewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space.These surface cracks create clouds of fine ice particles over the moon's South Pole and create Saturn's mysterious E-ring. Evidence for this has come from therobot Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Pictured here, a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown in true color from a close flyby. The deep crevasses are partly shadowed. WhyEnceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighboring moonMimas, approximately the same size, appearsquite dead.A analysis of ejected ice grains has yielded evidence that complex organic molecules.These large carbon-rich molecules bolster -- but do not prove -- that oceans under Enceladus' surface could contain life.