Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Oct 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.4106t&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #41.06; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.494
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Discovered in 1789, Enceladus is recognized (Porco et al. 2006) as the major source of gas and dust particles in the E-ring of Saturn. The small radius of its orbit makes complicated any ground based observations. The Cassini flyby during 2005 allowed to acquire data (Spahn et al. 2006; Spencer et al. 2006) of the composition and spatial variation throughout the Enceladus' atmosphere. It is believed that the highly nonuniform gas production observed during the flybys is associated with the geophysical activity of Enceladus and is caused by active geysers located in the south polar region. In such an environment, momentum exchange (i.e., molecular collisions) within the gas phase of the atmosphere can be important only in the vicinity of the geysers. As a result, a full scale study of Enceladus' atmosphere requires application of a kinetic approach (Waite et al. 2006; Tian et al. 2007; Burger et al. 2007).
In this work, we present a newly developed Direct Simulation Monte Carlo model of Enceladus' atmosphere, where multiple sources associated with southern thermal hot spots (Spencer et al. 2006; Porco et al. 2006) in addition to a uniform one contribute to the global (probably sputtering) production. The unique element of the model is the self-consistent treatment of a multispecie 3D flow of gas and dust grains with the dust and gas phases being coupled through sublimation/recondensation and momentum exchange. The water number and column density are calculated for conditions that correspond those during the flybys and are compared with the available INMS and UVIS data.
Support for this work comes partially from NASA Planetary Atmospheres grant NNX07AD19G.
Combi Michael R.
Tenishev Valeriy
Waite H. Jr. J..
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