Rev 61 Enceladus (March 12 2008) Options

[Holder of the Tw...]

The mission description PDF is now online.

Enceladus 3 Flyby

[edstrick]

"Nope, we fit the spectrum over all available wavelengths, with a single component filling a small fraction (typically about 1%) of each pixel. The rest of each pixel is too cold to radiate significantly in our short-wavelength detector. Pixel-averaged temperatures are much colder."

Modelling gets done faster these days. It sounds like this is close to a 2 component system.. cold background, radiating mostly at long wavelengths, and a tiny fraction of the surface at high temps. Is there any sign of an intermediate component.... say "hot but not really hot and actively emitting plume" general tigerstripe component, or would the estimated 1% pixel fraction include the entire "valley" part of the stripe within the pixel?

VIMS might be able to see the glow if there's a hottest component at or above that 180 K temp AND if it has high enough signal-to-noise AND if there's no sunlight. The sun's not very bright 5 microns, but on the shortwave flank of a blackbody spectrum, brightness drops FAST as your wavelength decreases and any solar interference would likely swamp any signal.