Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth largest moon, is awash with liquid water beneath its icy shell. At the moon’s south pole, the subsurface ocean erupts from one hundred geysers located along four parallel fractures known as ‘tiger stripes.’ The towering jets of ice particles form a plume that snows back down to the surface. Some of the ice even escapes the moon’s gravity and forms Saturn’s E-ring.
Icy moons that have (or are thought to have) subsurface oceans are common in the outer solar system. For example, Jupiter has several of them. These form when gravity from the planet they orbit stretches and squeezes their interior.
