Other
Scientific paper
Dec 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufm.p31d..03n&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #P31D-03
Other
5418 Heat Flow, 5422 Ices, 5450 Orbital And Rotational Dynamics (1221), 6280 Saturnian Satellites
Scientific paper
Several icy satellites of the outer solar system, notably Europa and Enceladus, are sufficiently tidally heated that they likely possess ice shells overlying oceans. Because tidal heating varies spatially [1], variations in ice shell thickness are likely to occur [2]. Lateral variations in shell thickness will in turn give rise to global topographic variations. The amplitude of this long-wavelength topography is potentially comparable to shape variations due to tidal and rotational stresses [3]. Thus, careful measurement of satellite shapes from limb profiles may be used to infer the nature of shell thickness variations, and thus the state of the ice shell. We demonstrate that limb profiles of Europa give no evidence for lateral shell thickness variations, in contrast to theoretical predictions [2] for a conductive ice shell above liquid water. There are two possible explanations: 1) the ice shell is sufficiently thick (> ~10 km) that lateral shell flow has smoothed out any variations; 2) the shell is heated mainly from below, resulting in a uniform, thin (~3 km) shell. Based on local topography from limb profiles and stereo topography [4] we favour the former explanation: a constant shell thickness rules out isostatic support, and the thin shell model is unable to flexurally support topography with amplitudes of ~1 km. Given sufficiently good limb profiles, a similar analysis may be carried out for Enceladus. Lateral variations in ice shell thickness also affect the tendency of a satellite to reorient itself [5]; thus, reorientation of Enceladus [6] may provide another constraint on the nature of the ice shell there. [1] G. Tobie et al., Icarus 177, 534-549, 2005. [2] Ojakangas and Stevenson, Icarus 81, 220-241, 1989 [3] Murray and Dermott, Solar System Dynamics, 2000 [4] Prockter and Schenk, Icarus 177, 305-326, 2005. [5] Ojakangas and Stevenson, Icarus 81, 242-270, 1989 [6] Nimmo and Pappalardo, Nature 441, 614-616, 2006.
Moore William B.
Nimmo Francis
Pappalardo Robert T.
Thomas Peter C.
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