Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.p13d..06n&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #P13D-06
Physics
5418 Heat Flow, 5475 Tectonics (8149), 6280 Saturnian Satellites
Scientific paper
Cassini's discovery of elevated temperatures [1] apparently centred on the south polar "tiger stripes" [2] prompted the suggestion that tidally-driven shear heating [3] was responsible for the heat production, while tides might also control the timing of vapour release [4]. The recent March 2008 flyby provided an opportunity to test the shear-heating hypothesis. During this flyby, CIRS obtained a map of the 9 - 16 micron thermal emission from all the tiger stripes (except part of Alexandria Sulcus) with a spatial resolution of 4.5 - 9 km, showing substantial variations in thermal emission along the length of the stripes. The shear-heating hypothesis predicts variations in tiger-stripe heat production depending on the local, time-averaged tidal shear stress [3]. Synthetic CIRS images can be obtained by convolving the predicted heat production variations with the CIRS instrument response. At low resolution, the synthetic local brightness temperature is controlled by the total length of tiger stripes within the instrument field of view. The resulting pattern of predicted brightness temperatures differs significantly from the CIRS observations. However, the original model did not take into account the variable tiger-stripe spacing, which results in variable strain rates and shear heating. Taking this effect into account results in a predicted brightness temperature distribution which more closely resembles the observations. [1] Spencer et al. Science 2006 [2] Porco et al. Science 2006 [3] Nimmo et al. Nature 2007 [4] Hurford et al. Nature 2007
Nimmo Francis
Spencer J. J.
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