Icy Moon
Icy moons are believed to be a common class of natural satellites or planetoids with surfaces composed mostly of ice. An icy moon may harbor an ocean underneath the surface, and possibly include a rocky core of silicate or metallic rocks. It is thought that they may be composed of ice II. The prototype of this class of object is Europa.
Icy moons warmed by tides may be the most common type of object to have liquid water, and thus the type of object most likely to have water-based life.
Some icy moons exhibit cryovolcanism, as well as geysers. The best studied example is Enceladus.
Read more about Icy Moon: Icy Moons, Small Icy Moons
Famous quotes containing the words icy and/or moon:
“Like to the Pontic Sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne’er knows retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont,
Even so my bloody thoughts with violent pace
Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It was the most wild and desolate region we had camped in, where, if anywhere, one might expect to meet with befitting inhabitants, but I heard only the squeak of a nighthawk flitting over. The moon in her first quarter, in the fore part of the night, setting over the bare rocky hills garnished with tall, charred, and hollow stumps or shells of trees, served to reveal the desolation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)