...and it's only a few hundred million miles away. Better fuel up your rocket and get started today, however, because we're talking about Saturn's moon Enceladus and the incredibly fine, snowy powder that covers its surface:

"The particles are only a fraction of a millimeter in size … even finer than talcum powder," study leader Paul Schenk, a planetary scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, said in a statement. "This would make for the finest powder a skier could hope for."


The discovery was made by a joint effort between the ever-effective NASA Cassini orbiter and maps of the moon's surface that used various colors to represent the age of surface features. The image included here is an artist's rendition of the surface.

In some places the snow cover is an estimated 330 feet deep! Bring your fat skis.

[National Geographic via Boing Boing]