A mysterious spot has been discovered on Saturn's moon, leaving scientists puzzled about its origin and nature.

The Saturnian moon Enceladus has recently been the focus of considerable attention from scientists due to the discovery of substances essential for the emergence of life. However, they have now identified another intriguing detail in images that has stirred the scientific community.

This pertains to a peculiar dark spot that appeared in the images from NASA's Voyager and Cassini missions. It became one of the key discussion points at the 2024 meeting of the American Geophysical Union, as reported by Space.

The discovery of the object was led by a team headed by Cynthia Phillips, a planetary geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. According to her, the small spot was first noticed in images from 2009, but it had completely vanished by 2012.

Enceladus has a high albedo, meaning it can reflect a large portion of sunlight. This quality makes the Saturnian moon exceptionally bright and reduces the chances of detecting "unexpected" dark spots. Initially, scientists suggested that the spot might simply be a common imaging artifact; however, additional images proved otherwise.

A review of the images also eliminated the possibility that it was merely a shadow, especially since analyses from other instruments revealed that the object has a reddish-brown color. Thus, the most likely explanation left is that the spot is a crater.

"The reason it appears dark could be that it's a piece of some dark material that landed on the surface," Phillips stated. She also speculated that the color might be due to the crater exposing a deeper layer of ice with a different hue.

At the same time, the scientist did not rule out the possibility that it could be the result of some internal process that brought Enceladus's inner layers to the surface.

Although the origin of the spot remains unknown, there are other questions that still lack answers — for instance, why it disappeared.

According to the scientists' calculations, if its disappearance is linked to the deposition of ice layers, they should have concealed it for at least 100 years. Therefore, they now have reason to reconsider whether their calculations were incorrect.

In any case, the primary question must first be addressed: what was it in the first place?

As previously reported, debris from Martian rock has helped scientists clearly establish that there was once liquid water on the red planet.