Enceladus is Saturn’s sixth largest moon, but it’s one of the most interesting objects in the Solar System because of the amazing plumes of water ice found blasting out of the moon’s southern pole. There could be deposits of liquid water underneath the surface of Enceladus, and this raises the possibility that there’s even life there too.
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Discovered in 1789 by William Herschel, astronomers didn’t know much about it, until it was first visited in 1980s by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft. We now know that Enceladus has a diameter of 500 km, less than a 10th the diameter of Saturn’s largest moon: Titan. Enceladus is one of the brightest objects in the Solar System, with a surface as pure white as snow; and so it reflects almost 100% of the sunlight that strikes it.
Enceladus is named after one of the giants in Greek mythology. In fact, all of the large moons of Saturn are named after giants in greek mythology: the Titans. These names were suggested by William Herschel’s son John Herschel. Specific features on the surface of Enceladus, like craters and rifts, are named after places and people in the Arabian Nights stories. For example, Aladdin Crater and Samarkand Sulci.
It’s one of the major satellites that orbit close to Saturn, within the ring system. Enceladus is the 14th closest moon to Saturn, orbiting at an average distance of 237,948 km from Saturn. It takes 1.37 days to complete an orbit around Saturn. It’s also tidally locked to Saturn, so it always presents the same face to the planet, completing one rotation for every orbit.
The biggest mystery of Enceladus is the plume of water vapor discovered by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in 2005. This plume of water appears to be jetting out of cracks near the moon’s southern pole. Because Enceladus is so close to Saturn, it experiences tidal flexing from Saturn’s gravity. This could be enough to keep the interior of Enceladus warmer than it should be. It’s possible that it has oceans of liquid water underneath the surface of the ice, and this water escapes through these cracks at the moon’s southern pole. This could be a good place to search for life, since wherever there’s liquid water on Earth, we find life.
We’ve written many articles about Enceladus for Universe Today. Here’s an article about salt found in the plumes from Enceladus, and the possibility of a liquid ocean on Enceladus.
If you’d like more information on Enceladus, check out NASA’s Solar System Exploration Guide, and here’s a link to a cool mosaic image of Enceladus.
We’ve recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast all about Saturn’s moons. Listen here, Episode 61: Saturn’s Moons.
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