Poster’s Note: One of the many under-appreciated aspects of NASA is the extent to which it publishes quality science content for children and Ph.D.’s alike. NASA Space Place has been providing general audience articles for quite some time that are freely available for download and republishing. Your tax dollars help promote science! The following article was provided for reprinting in December, 2017.
The Space Place article format has changed recently, including more embedded images. To simplify the posting process, a PDF version of the article is provided below, with a snippet of the article reproduced below it.
Download as PDF: Snowy Worlds Beyond Earth
By Linda Hermans-Killiam
There are many places on Earth where it snows, but did you know it snows on other worlds, too? Here are just a few of the places where you might find snow beyond Earth:
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A Moon of Saturn: Enceladus
Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, has geysers that shoot water vapor out into space. There it freezes and falls back to the surface as snow. Some of the ice also escapes Enceladus to become part of Saturn’s rings. The water vapor comes from a heated ocean which lies beneath the moon’s icy surface. (Jupiter’s moon Europa is also an icy world with a liquid ocean below the frozen surface.) All of this ice and snow make Enceladus one of the brightest objects in our solar system.
Caption: Enceladus as viewed from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Credit: NASA …
Want to learn more about weather on other planets? Check out NASA Space Place: spaceplace.nasa.gov/planet-weather
This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
About NASA Space Place
With articles, activities, crafts, games, and lesson plans, NASA Space Place encourages everyone to get excited about science and technology. Visit spaceplace.nasa.gov (facebook|twitter) to explore space and Earth science!
