This is Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons that might harbor life. That nearly geometric blue pattern on its surface is called “tiger striping,” and is a clue that there’s a liquid ocean sloshing around beneath the frozen surface – and occasionally shooting out massive geysers into space. It even seems like it’s salty, like ours. And maybe teeming with something like the methane-eating microbes found around geothermic vents under our ocean here.
The Cassini orbiter snapped this photo on July 14, 2005. That little probe is still out there, looping around Saturn and sending cool stuff back home for us to see.
(Image credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA, found [via APOD], who we scooped last week. Heh.)