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Enceladus: Hot spots on an ice world

Nature Astronomy volume 1, Article number: 0084 (2017) Cite this article

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Cassini's radiometer measurements identify Enceladus's surface cracks as subsurface hot spots.

The last twenty years of spacecraft and telescope data have produced a dramatic change in how we think about the icy moons orbiting the giant outer planets. We now know that many of these moons have subsurface oceans1, and they are considered among the most promising targets for searching for life. Saturn's moon Enceladus is the most active of these worlds, with water vapour and ice particulate jets that emanate from the south polar terrain (SPT)2,3. The surface of Enceladus has varied terrain types that imply a complex history of activity and quiescence. Heavily cratered regions are billions of years old, while some areas of ridged and grooved terrain are tens to hundreds of millions of years old2. In contrast, crater counts show that the surface of the SPT is extraordinarily young: less than 500,000 years old2. Gravity data from close flybys and measurements of the moon's libration suggest that Enceladus has a global liquid water ocean under an ice shell 30–40 km thick4,5. Across the SPT this shell thins to 5–10 km, allowing liquid from the ocean to escape through jets5.

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Figure 1: An illustrative slice through Enceladus's surface.

DR ANTOINE LUCAS

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lynn Carter is at the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, 1629 E. University Boulevard, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA.,

    Lynn Carter

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  1. Lynn Carter
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Correspondence to Lynn Carter.

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Carter, L. Enceladus: Hot spots on an ice world. Nat Astron 1, 0084 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-017-0084

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