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Nature Geoscience 1, 816 (1 December 2008) | doi:10.1038/ngeo373

Planetary science: Jets of mystery

Heike Langenberg

Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, was placed firmly on planetary scientists' research agenda after the intriguing insights of the Cassini spacecraft in 2005. The diameter of this little moon is 505 km — no larger than the distance between Madrid and Barcelona or Houston and New Orleans — but Enceladus beats most of the other Saturnian moons in terms of activity: plumes of water vapour that have been compared to the Old Faithful geyser at Yellowstone are expelled from four 'tiger-stripes'; long trenches that cross the moon's south pole.