Enceladus Plume Search, Nov. 27 |
Enceladus Plume Search, Nov. 27 |
Nov 24 2005, 04:01 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1465 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Columbus OH USA Member No.: 13 |
Interesting item in the science plan kernel (S16) just released to the NAIF website:
OBSERVATION_ID: S1629 SEQUENCE: S16 OBSERVATION_TITLE: Plume Search SCIENCE_OBJECTIVE: Hope to detect/observe plumes, whether from volcanic activity or geysers. OBS_DESCRIPTION: Point and stare. SUBSYSTEM: ISS PRIMARY_POINTING: ISS_NAC to Enceladus (0.0,5.0,0.0 deg. offset) REQUEST_ID: ISS_018EN_PLUMES001_PRIME REQUEST_TITLE: ENCELADUS Geyser/Plume Search REQ_DESCRIPTION: 1;ENCELADUS Geyser/Plume Search 1x1xNPp -- 3 different exposures BEGIN_TIME: 2005 NOV 27 19:00:00 UTC END_TIME: 2005 NOV 27 20:00:00 UTC -------------------- |
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Dec 2 2005, 08:14 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
The question that comes to my mind is:
If "warm" ice is convecting towards Enceladus' surface and then fountaining out of these south polar vents in significant quantities, could this have been happening for a very large percentage of Enceladus' existence? Do we have any clue of how much mass is entrained in the E ring? And can we even estimate the rate of mass lost from Enceladus due to this process? Because, for example, even if it's only losing a few tons of material a day, after billions of years, such venting would significantly reduce the mass and size of the body. And what would happen to an icy moon that has lost a significant amount of mass from within -- wouldn't there be signs of global crustal compression? I guess it depends on what's heating the interior ice and forcing convection of "warm ice" to the surface. Since tidal heating seems unlikely for such a small body, perhaps it's radiogenic? Maybe Enceladus happened to form around a rocky core that, for some as-yet-unguessed reason, had an anomalous amount of radiogenic minerals within it? If that's the case, then maybe Enceladus started out a lot bigger and has been losing mass -- and size -- for billions of years. Otherwise, you'd have to think that the activity we're seeing now is relatively rare, and we're lucky to be seeing it... -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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