Related papers: The obliquity of Enceladus
On the basis of gravity and radar observations with the Cassini spacecraft, the moment of inertia of Titan and the orientation of Titan's rotation axis have been estimated in recent studies. According to the observed orientation, Titan is…
Over the south pole of Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn, geysers eject water into space in a striped pattern, making Enceladus one of the most attractive destinations in the search for extraterrestrial life. We explore the ocean dynamics…
We constructed a 6-degrees of freedom rotational model of Titan as a 3-layer body consisting of a rigid core, a fluid global ocean, and a floating ice shell. The ice shell exhibits partially-compensated lateral thickness variations in order…
Eccentricity or obliquity tides have been proposed as the missing energy source that may explain the anomalously large radius of some transiting ``hot Jupiters''. To maintain a non-zero and large obliquity, it was argued that the planets…
Observational data suggest that the ice shell on Enceladus is thicker at the equator than at the pole, indicating an equator-to-pole ice flow. If the ice shell is in an equilibrium state, the mass transport of the ice flow must be balanced…
Many obsects in the solar system are suspected to have experience reorientation of their spin axes. As their rotation rates are slow and their shapes are nearly spherical, the formation of mass anomalies, by either endogenic of exogenic…
Tidal dissipation is thought to be responsible for the observed high heat loss on Enceladus. Forced librations can enhance tidal dissipation in the ice shell, but how such librations affect the thermal state of Enceladus has not been…
We develop a long-term 1-D evolution model for icy satellites that couples multiple processes: water migration and differentiation, geochemical reactions and silicate phase transitions, compaction by self-gravity, and ablation. The model…
Stellar insolation has been used as the main constraint on a planet's habitability. However, as more Earth-like planets are discovered around low-mass stars (LMSs), a re-examination of the role of tides on the habitability of exoplanets has…
Some short-period exoplanets (hot Jupiters) are observed by their transits to have anomalously large radii. It has been suggested that these planets are in a resonance involving persistent misalignment and synchronous precession of their…
Enceladus's gravity and shape have been explained in terms of a thick isostatic ice shell floating on a global ocean, in contradiction of the thin shell implied by librations. Here we propose a new isostatic model minimizing crustal…
Enceladus is among the most intriguing bodies in the solar system due to its astrobiological potential. Determining the extent and duration of habitability (i.e., sustained habitability) requires characterizing the interior properties and…
The formation and orbital evolution of Saturn's inner mid-sized moons are still debated. The most puzzling aspects are 1) how the Tethys-Dione pair and the Mimas-Enceladus pair passed through their strong 3:2 mean-motion resonances during…
The geologically active south pole of Enceladus generates a plume of micron-sized particles, which likely form Saturn's tenuous E-ring extending from the orbit of Mimas to Titan. Interactions between these particles and satellites have been…
It has been long puzzling whether the ice thickness variations observed on Enceladus can be sustained sorely by a polar-amplified bottom heating. The key to this question is to understand how the upward heat transport by convective plumes…
Ocean worlds are prevalent in the solar system. Focusing on Enceladus, Titan, Europa, and Ganymede, I use rotating convection theory and numerical simulations to predict ocean currents and the potential for ice-ocean coupling. When the…
The ice shell on Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn, exhibits strong asymmetry between the northern and southern hemispheres, with all known geysers concentrated over the south pole, even though the expected pattern of tidal-rotational…
Obliquity tides are a potentially important source of heat for extrasolar planets on close-in orbits. Although tidal dissipation will usually reduce the obliquity to zero, a nonzero obliquity can persist if the planet is in a Cassini state,…
Using astrometric observations spanning more than a century and including a large set of Cassini data, we determine Saturn's tidal parameters through their current effects on the orbits of the eight main and four coorbital moons. We have…
Neptune's present axial tilt of approximately 28 deg. with respect to its orbital plane can be explained by collisions that its primordial core may have experienced with surrounding planetary embryos during the final stages of its…