Places in the Solar System where life might exist (except the Moon and Ceres, which are just shown for scale).

Researchers modeled eruptions on Saturn's moon Enceladus as uniform curtains along prominent fractures that stretch across the icy moon's south pole. They found that brightness enhancements appear as optical illusions in places where the viewer is looking through a "fold" in the curtain (left image). The folds exist because the fractures in Enceladus' surface are more wavy than perfectly straight. The researchers think this optical illusion is responsible for most - but not all - of what appear to be individual jets. Some discrete jets ("cryogeysers") are still required to explain observations by the Cassini spacecraft.

Phantom jets in simulated images produced by the scientists (green overlays in right image) line up nicely with some of the features in real Cassini images that appear to be discrete columns of spray. The correspondence between simulation and spacecraft data suggests that much of the discrete jet structure is an illusion.

Curtain eruptions occur on Earth where molten rock, or magma, gushes out of a deep fracture. These eruptions, which often create spectacular curtains of fire, are seen in places like Hawaii, Iceland, and the Galapagos Islands. On Enceladus, the "lava" in these curtain eruptions is liquid water.