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:
“And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think. And so on for all the other things which made merry with my senses. Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“As the moon waxes, then wanes, so at middle age do people decline.”
—Chinese proverb.