← Another date

Birthday · November 25, 1995

Saturn's Cleanest Moon: Enceladus

November 25, 1995

Consider this: the iron in your blood was forged in a supernova explosion billions of years ago.

Saturn's Cleanest Moon: Enceladus

A little universe, just for you

Your date.
Ready to give.

Free PNG · 1080 × 1350 · No account needed

Image rights and credit requirements apply when sharing or reusing imagery.

Change the year

APOD published November 25, 1995. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.

Behind the image

Saturn's Cleanest Moon: Enceladus

Original APOD · November 25, 1995

Enceladus orbits Saturn between the smaller Mimas and the larger Tethys. Enceladus is composed mostly of water ice and has the cleanest and purest ice surface in the Solar System. It's surface therefore appears nearly white. The surface also has many unusual groves and relatively few craters, like Jupiter's moon Ganymede. This indicates that the surface is young and/or newly reformed. To explain this, some astronomers speculate that Enceladus is susceptible to some sort of volcanic activity. Enceladus was originally discovered in 1789 by William Herschel.

Explore November 25 in other years