We can see even from a distance, there seem to be this material coming off the South Pole, and it was so dramatic and so unusual, that we thought what look might be a camera artifact. 

 

Enceladus is tiny, just 300 miles across, too small for any kind of dramatic geology. If you look at Enceladus, it kind of looks like it’s covered in snow, it’s very bright, it’s as bright as freshly fallen snow. 

 

Everywhere you look, there’s fractures, there’re mountain ranges, there are deep chasms and when we finally looked at the South Pole, that’s when, it just became apparent, that’s where all the activities going on.

 

The team found something extraordinary, row after row of enormous geysers, shooting water and ice crystals out into space from the snowy white surface. 

 

And so it’s like a giant detective story, piece by piece putting the evidence together until finally we get back that really great picture, the smoking gun, showing the geysers actually coming out from the South Pole of Enceladus.

 

Water and water ice are spewing out of giant crevasse from a region about the size of southern California that’s apparently just basically a big geothermal field, you can think of it that way.

 

It doesn’t look much like California from orbit, just cool as you’d expect an icy moon this far from the sun to be. But that’s the mystery of Enceladus.

 

I mean the bloody thing is hot, the South Pole is hot, ok, it’s like, it would be, it’s just crazy as seeing the North Pole of the earth is hotter than the equator. 

 

The best indication so far suggests the source of the water lies in a subterranean ocean or sea hidden beneath the icy crust under the South Pole, warmed by tidal heating. 

 

It’s been a mystery because Enceladus is so small, it’s not supposed to have that much heat, we think that heat source underground melts water and that melted water which may be mixed with some ammonia and other things to lower its melting point then wakes work its way out of the ground and spews up into space.