Greenland melting, ice geysers in space, thermite pumpkins: Your weekend reading list

Ice geyser plumes of Enceladus
Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice out from many locations along the famed "tiger stripes" near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The tiger stripes are fissures that spray icy particles, water vapor and organic compounds.
NASA | JPL | SSI

This week: Water unifies the solar system this week: Rivers and ice geysers reveal some of the secrets of Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Back on Earth, American eels use the vast Atlantic Ocean to hide their spawning routes. And, finally: The high water composition of pumpkins protects them from the amazing heat of a thermite reaction.

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NASA spacecraft to dive into icy geyser on distant world

Enceladus
Lit terrain seen here is on the trailing side of Enceladus. North on Enceladus is up. To the south, the record of impact cratering is much more sparse, and instead the land is covered in fractures, the "tiger stripes", ropy or hummocky terrain and long, linear features.
NASA | JPL-Caltech | Space Science Institute

Orbiting Saturn since 2004, the Cassini mission has dropped a probe on Titan, the planet's largest moon. It has studied Saturn's rings and moons and is now set to race through the spray of the geysers of Enceladus, Saturn's sixth-largest moon, to find out about the ocean lurking below.

Earth's geysers, like Old Faithful, erupt from groundwater flowing down to heated rocks. The icy geysers of of Enceladus, though, emerge from great fissures, the "tiger stripes," in the moon's icy crust that allow the global ocean below to escape. via Ars Technica

Greenland is melting away

Rivers of melt-water racing across the surface of the ice sheet are the vanguard of a climate change in Greenland. A group of scientists set up on the frozen plain to study the impact of these glacial rivers on the ice, on the melting rate and gather previously unknown data about the state of the ice sheet. via the New York Times

• Bonus reading: Flying a drone above Greenland's ice sheet

Epic eel migration mapped for the first time

For the first time, scientists have tracked the migration of American eels to their open ocean spawning grounds. Swimming along a secret watery superhighway, American eels travel more than 1,500 miles from the eastern Canadian coast to the middle of the North Atlantic according to the GPS tag data. via National Geographic

American eels
Baby eels, known as elvers, swim in a plastic bag at a buyer's holding facility in Portland, Maine.
Robert F. Bukaty | AP file

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The Apollo archives hit Flickr, total awesomeness ensues

With more than 14,000 images uploaded to Flickr, the Project Apollo Archive opened the hidden photo albums to the public that provide a sometimes candid look into the more mundane activities of the moon program. By making the images available online the they invited the public to make them their own, and the results have been thrilling. via Wired

Thermite and a pumpkin

Find out what happens when you mix pumpkins with a bit of thermite (hint: molten iron and fire). via The Royal Institute

Bonus Edgar Allen Poe: The Raven, performed by Q (John de Lancie)