Interior of Enceladus

Details Interior of Enceladus Interior of Enceladus

May 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agusm.p33a..06s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #P33A-06

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

6280 Saturnian Satellites

Scientific paper

From analysis of 23 Cassini images for a shape determination, plus a mass determination from three flybys at altitudes of 1258.647 km, 497.001 km, and 168.162 km, the mean density of Enceladus is 1608 ± 5 kg m-3 [1]. This contrasts with pre-Cassini density estimates of 1120 kg m-3 [2]. The updated density requires considerably more rock in Enceladus than previously thought, with consequences of more radiogenic heat production, and enhanced likelihood of differentiation of water from rock-metal. There is enough rock inside Enceladus that long-lived radioactivity, by itself, could have melted all the ice within 100 km of the center after about 350 Myr. With the addition of short-lived radioactivity [3], and tidal heating, it is energetically plausible that the ice and rock inside Enceladus could have separated. We assume complete differentiation and infer a two-zone interior with a large rock-metal core and an overlying ice shell about 65 to 105 km thick. Given the present activity on Enceladus, the possibility must be considered that liquid water exists within the ice shell [4]. References: [1] Thomas, P. C. et al. (2006) LPSC XXXVII, 1639. [2] Peale, S. J. (1999) Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 37, 533-602. [3] Matson, D. L. et al. (2005) Eos Trans. AGU, 86(52), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract P32A-05. [4] Porco et al. (2006) Science in press.

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