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  • Presentation | P23C: Enceladus: An Ocean World Odyssey I Poster
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  • P23C-2705: Surface Property Comparisons Between Enceladus, Europa, and Iapetus
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Author(s):
Sophia Grusnis, California State University Los Angeles (First Author, Presenting Author)
Emilie Royer, California State University Los Angeles
Cynthia Phillips, JPL / NASA / Caltech


Saturn’s moon Enceladus is the brightest world in the solar system, largely due to cryovolcanic plumes erupting from the “tiger stripes” at its south pole; discovered by Cassini (2004–2017). These plumes continuously resurface the moon and form Saturn’s E-ring. In contrast, Jupiter’s moon Europa, which also has an icy crust over a subsurface ocean, shows no such ring, raising a key question: does Europa have similar, though perhaps smaller or more intermittent, plumes? Enceladus’ high albedo, backscattering, and uniform brightness suggest ongoing resurfacing by icy plume fallout. About 100 low albedo spots, each ~100 to 800 meters wide, outside expected primary snowfall zones show consistent topographic relief that possess intrinsic low albedo based on a 10-year change detection with different viewing geometries. Here, we compare thermal segregation features on Galileo SSI (GSSI) images of Europa and Cassini ISS (CISS) images of Iapetus to CISS images of Enceladus. If these newly found dark spots on Enceladus show similar properties, they may help reveal the origin of these patches and offer clues to Iapetus’ dark hemisphere. This study also gives insight on regions of Europa that we can target as potential plume sites when the Europa Clipper mission flybys begin in 2030.



Scientific Discipline
Neighborhood
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Main Session
Discussion