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Planetary science

Tectonic overturn on Enceladus

Nature Geoscience volume 3, pages 75–76 (2010)Cite this article

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The south pole of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus is anomalously warm, geologically youthful and cryovolcanically active. Episodic convective overturn explains how the moon's modest sources of internal heat can be channelled into intense geological activity.

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Figure 1: Global distribution and variety of terrains on Enceladus, obtained with the Cassini oribter's Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Paul Helfenstein is at the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, 320 Space Sciences Building, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853-6801, USA. helfenst@astro.cornell.edu,

    Paul Helfenstein

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  1. Paul Helfenstein
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Helfenstein, P. Tectonic overturn on Enceladus. Nature Geosci 3, 75–76 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo763

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