How About...Torus Clouds?

Water present at Saturn's Atmosphere

This artist's concept shows a glowing patch of ultraviolet light near Saturn's north pole that occurs at the "footprint" of the magnetic connection between Saturn and its moon Enceladus.(Image credit: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL/University of Colorado/Central Arizona College/SSI) I'll talk about this later.

ESA (European Space Agency) with the help of Herschel Space Observatory found out a donut-shaped cloud encircling Saturn.







In 1997 ESA scientists and astronomers, with the help of the Infrared Space Observatory  detected the presence of  water in Saturn's atmosphere. Since then, scientists were wondering where did that water came from?








                                                                                                                                                                                             

This question is more complex than thought. Let's analyze the entire  situation. Where's Saturn located? Saturn is located at 9.529 AU (Astronomical Units. 1 AU equals distance from the sun and the Earth= 149 million km away).




That means it should be colder than Earth, right? Seems to make sense. But how much colder than Earth? It is said to be approximately -270 degrees Fahrenheit or -168 degrees Celsius. 


So now that we have the data, what do we know? well, we do know Saturn has gaseous water at deep layers (knowing that Saturn's core temperature is approximately 11,700 ° Celsius.  So?


How did that water present at Saturn's lower layers, came out all the way to the outer atmosphere?




Scientists didn't know the answer, so what they did was to create a computer aided model to simulate a cloud that would be providing that water, to Saturn's atmosphere.  


After processing all the information gathered by previous spacecrafts (Cassini, Voyager and Hubble) they were able to get a strange result: a torus surrounding Saturn.  The computer simulation said that in order to have water present at Saturn's atmosphere, the "arrangement" of clouds should be a torus. 


Now...when technology met new technology:


With the help of Herschel Space Observatory (which captures a wide range of electromagnetic spectrum) ESA astronomers found out something fascinating: a torus shaped cloud encircling Saturn. 


Scientist with the help of Cassini's previous information, matched what they knew about one of most intriguing Saturn's moon: Enceladus. The result was even more amazing. 



It happens to be that Enceladus is constantly ejecting large amounts of water. Yes you read correctly, water jets are coming out of some type of geysers at Enceladus. What's even more astonishing is that these water jets (around 200 kg of water per second) are actually affecting Saturn's Environment. 


How? Creating this torus shaped cloud around its atmosphere. 


"The torus is more than 373,000 miles (600,000 kilometers) across and about 37,000 miles (60,000 kilometers) thick." (ESA,2011)


and this is how it looks:

Water vapor and ice erupt from Saturn's moon Enceladus, the source of a newly discovered donut-shaped cloud around Saturn. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wonderful,  isn't it?


Thanks to ESA and NASA, to you readers, and stay in touch for more information about Enceladus.


I.