REFILE - CLARIFYING CAPTION
The surface of Saturn's geyser moon Enceladus is seen in this image released on May 31, 2012 by NASA's Cassini mission. Cassini imaging scientists used views like this to help them identify the source locations for individual jets spurting ice particles, water vapor and trace organic compounds from the surface of Enceladus. Recent findings from NASA's Cassini mission reveal that Enceladus provides a special laboratory for watching unusual behavior of plasma, or hot ionized gas. In these recent findings, some Cassini scientists think they have observed "dusty plasma", a condition theorized but not previously observed on site, near Enceladus. Data from Cassini's fields and particles instruments also show that the usual "heavy" and "light" species of charged particles in normal plasma are actually reversed near the plume spraying from the moon's south polar region. The findings are discussed in two recent papers in the Journal of Geophysical Research.