EPSS Colloquium winter-2015

In 2005, the Cassini mission at Saturn discovered a remarkable and unique geological province at high southern latitudes on the small icy moon, Enceladus. Towering jets of powder-sized, salty ice particles, along with water vapor laced with organic compounds and accompanied by a shocking ~5GW of thermal radiation, vent from four prominent fractures crossing the moon's 500-km-wide south polar terrain (SPT). These observations, together with gravity data collected by Cassini in the last several years, point a liquid layer beneath the province that supplies the eruptions, but whether or not it is regional or global is not completely certain. I will present the first comprehensive comparison of the spatial distribution and temporal variability of the geysering, the tidal stresses exerted on the moon by Saturn, and the anomalous thermal emission, and discuss the implications of these findings for the moon’s interior structure. I will also briefly describe the means by which Enceladus supplies material to Saturn's E ring.