Enceladus, yet another watery place

Maybe I was right, in another thread, when I called this place
Europa Junior..

Enceladus water

Water, and internal heat.
Now that we have more answers, the new questions are multplying like rabbits!

This is a very small moon..where is the heat coming from?

Mabey it's caused by gravitational stresses applyed on it by orbiting Saturn. That is a know cause of internal heating. But otherwise I'm stumped on how it can happen. This is very interesting.

GoldEagle,

Thats what I was thinking too.
The internal friction idea..
but I wonder why it's concentrated so far off center..

What about a large impact, that pretty much buried itself in the polar region?
I wonder how long the heat would take to radiate away?

That sound reasonable spacedoubt. It may have been an impact of some sort. But evidence of such an impact would have been detected (craters, fragments, ejecta, etc).

www.jpl.nasa.gov...

The ion and neutral mass spectrometer and the ultraviolet imaging spectrograph found the atmosphere contains water vapor. The mass spectrometer found the water vapor comprises about 65 percent of the atmosphere, with molecular hydrogen at about 20 percent. The rest is mostly carbon dioxide and some combination of molecular nitrogen and carbon monoxide. The variation of water vapor density with altitude suggests the water vapor may come from a localized source comparable to a geothermal hot spot. The ultraviolet results strongly suggest a local vapor cloud.

The fact that the atmosphere persists on this low-gravity world, instead of instantly escaping into space, suggests the moon is geologically active enough to replenish the water vapor at a slow, continuous rate.

I found this very interesting, the tiny moon has an atmosphere caused by gases being released. So it must be linked to some form a volcanisim. I think, like Iapetus that this is a captured comet.

Amazing how such an important find like this dosen't intrest ATS members because it dosn't contain aliens or UFOs in it.

Anyways, I think that the rings of saturn and the moon Iapetus are created by captured comets. The rings formed by material from the comet ejected over many years. This moon Enceladus may be of whats left of the comet.

Iapetus is a moon, not an artifical. It being light might indicated it's a comet due to it's "ice" content and it's odd orbit.

LOL, You're so right..I'm used to it..


But just look at this moon..such an unusual place..
unusual features. It's also seems to be "out of round".
A little bit egg shaped.


And the temperature data, corresponds somewhat to the places where the
most unusual cracks are located.



I think there is something to your comet theory.
More data needed!

Originally posted by spacedoubt
LOL, You're so right..I'm used to it..


But just look at this moon..such an unusual place..
unusual features. It's also seems to be "out of round".
A little bit egg shaped.

Not to be critical, but this pic is showing the moon in a phase. I.E., the sun is reflecting it's light off of a part of this moon, not a full disc. It's just like our moon and it's phases. In this photo, the sun seems to be delivering its light from the left and traveling right, that is why it "seems" to be egg-shaped.

That moon does seem "unusual", very neet...

Originally posted by Ohio_Ron


Not to be critical, but this pic is showing the moon in a phase. I.E., the sun is reflecting it's light off of a part of this moon, not a full disc. It's just like our moon and it's phases. In this photo, the sun seems to be delivering its light from the left and traveling right, that is why it "seems" to be egg-shaped.

Moon phases, never thought of that...j/k..I'm pretty familiar with those.



It may be an illusion, due to the smoother terrain at that region.
but I think the curvature of the sphere at that area is different, than the rest of the moon..Have a look, poke through the raw image galleries at the
cassini site.

Pick enceladus, and look through the images..Like I said, it may be an optical illusion, but to me, it looks somewhat out of round

I'm surprised I had not yet saw this... I'll have to look and read into more of it.

Here is the Wikipedia entry on Enceladus

en.wikipedia.org...

Enceladus (en-sel'-a-dus, Greek Εγκέλαδος) is a moon of Saturn discovered in 1789 by William Herschel. Despite its small size, Enceladus has a wide-range of surface types ranging from old, heavily cratered surfaces to young, very smooth terrain. Given its position in Saturn's E ring, the youthful appearance of portions of Enceladus' surface, the recent discovery of a short-lived atmosphere, and a hot spot near the south pole, it is likely that Enceladus is active today.

I think the hot spot is probably caused by tidal forces, only because I doubt that the effects from some sort of impact would last so long.

Actually, the moon was put there by aliens and the hot spot is thier propulsion system to move it out of a stable orbit and put it in such an orbit that it will collide with the Earth in 2012. Imagine that?

That was for you, GoldEagle.

Gases are being released from the southern pole, which may indicate volcanisim. The internal structure of the moon may be heated by the tidal action. Gases that are frozen (or liquid?) inside the moon may be vaporizing and escaping as a gas. The tempratures of the moon are cold enough to freeze many of the detected gases.

The gases include:

Hydrogen gas [H2]
Carbon Dioxide
Nitrogen Gas [N2]
Cabon Monoxide
Water Vapor




I noticed that the southern pole has large fissures in it that may extend deep into the cold icy surface. Also there is some colouration in the "canyons" in the southern hemisphere. But I'm not sure what to make of it but I think that the "atmosphere" refroze in the low lying regions of the moon.

P.S cmdrkeenkid, funniest thing I heard today.



[edit on 8/2/2005 by GoldEagle]

Originally posted by GoldEagle
P.S cmdrkeenkid, funniest thing I heard today.

Why laugh? To some nutters it's truth!

Anyway, I forgot to mention something in my last post. The moon probably is in more of an oblong shape. In fact, nothing is a true sphere, at least that I've heard of, in space. The Earth is even a few hundred miles wider at its equator than it is going from pole to pole. That's because of our rotation... Enceladus may be a bit more out of whack because of all the tidal stresses it goes through.

The first thing that strikes me about the moon is how on the top of the moon you have what looks like a powdery top layer that has not been disturbed for centuries while the lower part of the moon looks like glacial ice flow with no obvious sign of craters.

The Director,

Yeah, me too..Such a difference in terrain.
I still think the moon got whacked pretty hard at one point, who knows how long ago, by a good sized piece of comet or something.

I think that area was partially vaporized, the rest was melted and refrozen.
Hiding the evidence, and the crater..As the water filled-in, and relevelled the area..