Dec 11 - Tiger Stripes on Saturn's Moon

December 11 Tiger Stripes on Saturn's Moon by:

View of Saturn's moon Enceladus via the Cassini spacecraft. You can see the 4 bluish tiger stripes on the moon's left side. This image is tilted; the tiger stripes are at the moon's south pole. Active geysers are erupting from the tiger stripes even as we speak! Image via NASA/ ESA/ JPL/ SSI/ Cassini Imaging Team/ Carnegie Science. Read more.

Explained! Enceladus' enigmatic tiger stripes Saturn's moon Enceladus is one of the most fascinating worlds in our solar system. It has a subsurface water ocean and huge geyser-like plumes of vapor. The geysers erupt at the moon's south pole through large cracks in Enceladus' icy crust. These fissures - known to scientists as tiger stripes - have been one of the most distinctive and puzzling features on this moon since the Cassini spacecraft first spied them in 2005. Scientists have wanted to know ... how did the tiger stripes form? Why are they parallel? And why are they so evenly spaced? Now they think they have some answers. Read more.  All you need to know: This weekend's Geminid meteor shower The Geminid meteor shower - one of the highlights of the year for stargazers - will peak around the mornings of December 13 and 14, 2019, though under the light of a bright waning gibbous moon. Read more. Researchers describe 71 new species in 2019 New species from 5 continents and 3 oceans include geckos, goblin spiders, flowering plants, and Mediterranean ants. Read more. What we're reading From the BBC … Greenland ice melt 'is accelerating' Greenland is losing ice 7 times faster than it was in the 1990s. The assessment - published yesterday in the journal Nature - comes from an international team of polar scientists who reviewed satellite observations over a 26-year period. They say Greenland's contribution to sea-level rise is currently tracking what had been regarded as a pessimistic projection of the future. It means an additional 7 centimeters (2.8 inches) of ocean rise could now be expected by the end of the century from Greenland alone. Read more.

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Have you seen Venus and Saturn yet? It's not too late to see these 2 bright planets near each other in the west after sunset. Watch for them as soon as the sky begins to darken. Venus is the brighter one! Read more.

Winter sky over Three Fingers Canyon View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Marc Toso captured this image of the night sky over Three Finger Canyon in the San Rafael Swell in south-central Utah on November 25, He said, “Orion has set behind the sandstone walls and Pleiades is resting in the notch.” Thank you, Marc!  Submit your photo to EarthSky here! Did a friend forward EarthSkyNews to you? Click here to get your own subscription!

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