Related papers: Enceladus's Limit Cycle
Saturn raises a time-dependent tide on its small moon Enceladus, due to the eccentricity of the orbit. As shown in a companion paper (Goldreich et al.), the resulting tidal heating drives Enceladus into a limit cycle, in which its…
Enceladus is believed to have a saltwater global ocean with a mean depth of at least 30~km, heated from below at the ocean-core interface and cooled at the top, where the ocean loses heat to the icy lithosphere above. This scenario suggests…
Several planetary satellites apparently have subsurface seas that are of great interest for, among other reasons, their possible habitability. The geologically diverse Saturnian satellite Enceladus vigorously vents liquid water and vapor…
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…
The extraordinary activity at Enceladus' warm south pole indicates the presence of an internal global or local reservoir of liquid water beneath the surface. While Tyler (2009, 2011) has suggested that the geological activity and the large…
Beneath the icy shell encasing Enceladus, a small icy moon of Saturn, a global ocean of liquid water ejects geyser-like plumes into space through fissures in the ice, making it an attractive place to investigate habitability and to search…
The geologic activity at Enceladus's south pole remains unexplained, though tidal deformations are probably the ultimate cause. Recent gravity and libration data indicate that Enceladus's icy crust floats on a global ocean, is rather thin,…
Spacecraft observations suggest that the plumes of Saturn's moon Enceladus draw water from a subsurface ocean, but the sustainability of conduits linking ocean and surface is not understood. Observations show sustained (though tidally…
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' plume consists mainly of a mixture of water vapor and solid ice particles that may originate from a subsurface ocean. The physical processes underlying Enceladus' plume particle dynamics are still being debated, and quantifying…
As a long-term energy source, tidal heating in subsurface oceans of icy satellites can influence their thermal, rotational, and orbital evolution, and the sustainability of oceans. We present a new theoretical treatment for tidal heating in…
Enceladus is characterised by a south polar hot spot associated with a large outflow of heat, the source of which remains unclear. We compute the viscous dissipation resulting from tidal and libration forcing in the moon's subsurface ocean…
Tidal heating is the prime suspect behind Enceladus's south polar heating anomaly and global subsurface ocean. No model of internal tidal dissipation, however, can explain at the same time the total heat budget and the focusing of the…
The ice shell of Enceladus exhibits strong asymmetry between its hemispheres, with all known geysers concentrated over the south pole, even though its orbital configuration is almost perfectly symmetric. By exploring ocean circulation…
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…
This paper deals with a new formulation of the creep tide theory (Ferraz-Mello, Cel. Mech. Dyn. Astron. {\bf 116}, 109, 2013 $-$ Paper I) and with the tidal dissipation predicted by the theory in the case of stiff bodies whose rotation is…
Previous studies that have considered the ocean circulation on Enceladus have generally assumed the salinity to be Earth-like. However, according to observations and geochemical constraints, the salinity of Enceladus' ocean is likely to be…
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…
The habitability of Enceladus' subsurface ocean and the detectability of potential biosignatures depend on efficient ocean circulation and suitable ocean conditions. Directly probing the ocean is challenging because it lies beneath a thick…
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…