In July 2005 Cassini completed a spectacularly close flyby of Enceladus, passing just 173km above its surface.

From this flyby came confirmation that the moon has an atmosphere, and strong evidence that the gases which make up the atmosphere are coming from cracks in the surface, nick-named "tiger stripes", near the south pole.

This false-colour image shows the extent of the active region (Image: Nasa/JPL/SSI)
It appears that the gases are being forced through the surface, as they emerge in jets which shoot upwards for hundreds of kilometres before dispersing, eventually forming Saturn's E-ring.

Most of the gas is water vapour, suggesting strongly that liquid water lies under the moon's icy surface.

From his base at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Bob Brown leads the scientific team for Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (Vims) which analysed the chemical composition of Enceladus's atmosphere and mapped the distribution of various gases.

"We very clearly saw water; there's water everywhere on Enceladus, it's 99.9% water ice in general at the surface, and we've known that for years, so it wasn't a big surprise," he told the BBC News website.

"But when we started looking at our spectra we saw absorption bands from a compound that had to have carbon and hydrogen bonded together.

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And?

@dr. Who

this thread is in addition to the europe topic. In my opinion (and many others). Enceladus has good possibillities for extraterrestrial life. You can give your opinion on this topic. Is there life on enceladus?

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Speculation is pointless.

Until a probe goes there you really won't know for sure.

As for life in general, Asimov published an essay forty years ago giving potential life habitats for all the planets (he was not just a sci-fi writer but a professor of biochemistry.)

Well, you just pasted some dated info on Enceladus - nothing else. What were we supposed to respond to? As for wild speculation, I agree with JustAFriend and others when they say it's pretty pointless guessing as you can't really prove anything until you actually go there.

Wow. Maybe my grand kids can get come Enceladean Sea Monkeys for their school science project.

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I don't know...
last time I ate Enceladus, the gases produced were more than water vapour

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This is not an idea to be tossed aside lightly - it should be thrown with great force

Enceladus may just be clathrates; water vapour trapped with frozen methane that sublimates in a cloud when exposed to vaccuum by erosion on the planetary surface. This is a similar mechanism for out-gassing volatiles in comets, rather than any indication of an undersurface sea.

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plenty of woo, at the hotel hoagaland...

Good thing we don't all go on chat boards to do just that then, right?

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