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Solar system

Saturn's tides control Enceladus' plume

Nature volume 500, pages 155–156 (2013)Cite this article

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Data obtained by the Cassini spacecraft show that the plume of ice particles at the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus is four times brighter when the moon is farthest away from the planet than when it is closest. See Letter p.182

An analysis of images of Saturn's moon Enceladus taken from the Cassini Saturn orbiter, reported by Hedman et al.1 on page 182 of this issue, shows that the output of the giant plume of ice particles, which jets out of fractures in the south polar region of the moon, is controlled by diurnal changes in the tidal stresses from SaturnFootnote 1. The authors find a remarkably strong and simple relationship between the brightness of the plume and Enceladus' position in its orbit around Saturn, providing dramatic confirmation of predictions made in 2007 from a tidal-stress model2.

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Figure 1: Enceladus' ice-particle jets.

SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE/JPL/NASA

Notes

  1. *This article and the paper under discussion1 were published online on 31 July 2013.

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  1. John Spencer is at Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado 80302, USA.,

    John Spencer

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Correspondence to John Spencer.

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Spencer, J. Saturn's tides control Enceladus' plume. Nature 500, 155–156 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12462

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