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Kelly Lepo (kellylepo@astrodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 03-Jun-2023 15:34:07 JST Kelly Lepo
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Researchers used #JWST’s IFU to study the water around Saturn’s moon Enceledus. The IFU (Integral Field Unit) is a combination camera and spectrograph, which captures a spectrum of each pixel in an image.
They detected many lines of water from the torus around Enceladus and the plume itself. In this diagram, 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 moon, and red for the surrounding torus.
In conversation Saturday, 03-Jun-2023 15:34:07 JST from astrodon.social permalink
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1. 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.
  https://cdn.masto.host/astrodonsocial/media_attachments/files/110/458/746/567/858/084/original/d6bd72ee028ded5e.png
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  Kelly Lepo (kellylepo@astrodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 03-Jun-2023 15:34:08 JST Kelly Lepo
  
  Researchers using #JWST were able to catch an enormous water plume from Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. The plume is more than 20 times the size of the moon. Enceladus orbits Saturn every 33 hours, spraying water and leaving behind a torus—or “donut”—of material in its wake.
  So movie aliens, if you’re considering invading Earth to steal our precious water, I would suggest taking a detour to Saturn 😉
  More: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-112
  #Astronomy #SolarSystem #Space
  In conversation Saturday, 03-Jun-2023 15:34:08 JST permalink
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  1. Animation of the Saturn system and its moons, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea and Titan, with arcs showing the orbits of the Moons. A blue ring surrounds the second moon Enceladus. Zoom into Enceladus. A large plume, much larger than the moon itself, is seen coming from the moon’s south pole. Next, a real JWST image is superimposed on the animation, titled “Water Pulme and Torus Model”. The image appears pixelated. A single, white pixel is labeled “Enceladus.” The dark background is labeled “Water Torus.” Below the pixel representing Enceladus is a roughly triangular-shaped area of brighter blue pixels, which is narrower near the moon and gets wider as it extends to the bottom of the image. This is labeled “Plume” near the moon and “Extended Plume” near the bottom. The JWST image fades out, and we zoom into a 3D model of Enceladus based on Casini images. A light grey moon with a few craters has four bright spots, plumes, just below its south pole. This shows us a detailed view of the area that is a single, bright pixel in the JWST image, and the source of the large plume seen by JWST.
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