Schneider, Nicholas M. and Burger, Matthew H. and Schaller, Emily L. and Brown, Michael E. and Johnson, Robert E. and Kargel, Jeffrey S. and Dougherty, Michele K. and Achilleos, Nicholas A. (2009) No sodium in the vapour plumes of Enceladus. Nature, 459 (7250). pp. 1102-1104. ISSN 0028-0836. doi:10.1038/nature08070. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20090827-151916234
![[img]](https://authors.library.caltech.edu/style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png) |
PDF (Supplementary Data and Notes and Supplementary References)
- Supplemental Material
See Usage Policy. 160kB |
Use this Persistent URL to link to this item: https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20090827-151916234
Abstract
The discovery of water vapour and ice particles erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus fuelled speculation that an internal ocean was the source. Alternatively, the source might be ice warmed, melted or crushed by tectonic motions. Sodium chloride (that is, salt) is expected to be present in a long-lived ocean in contact with a rocky core. Here we report a ground-based spectroscopic search for atomic sodium near Enceladus that places an upper limit on the mixing ratio in the vapour plumes orders of magnitude below the expected ocean salinity. The low sodium content of escaping vapour, together with the small fraction of salt-bearing particles, argues against a situation in which a near-surface geyser is fuelled by a salty ocean through cracks in the crust. The lack of observable sodium in the vapour is consistent with a wide variety of alternative eruption sources, including a deep ocean6, a freshwater reservoir, or ice. The existing data may be insufficient to distinguish between these hypotheses.
| Item Type: | Article | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Related URLs: |
| |||||||||
| ORCID: |
| |||||||||
| Additional Information: | © 2009 Nature Publishing Group. Received 24 October 2008; Accepted 8 April 2009. Some of the data presented here were obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the financial support of the W.M. Keck Foundation. We also acknowledge the Anglo-Australian Telescope and its staff. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation's Planetary Astronomy Program and the NASA Postdoctoral Program. This paper has benefited from discussions with M. Zolotov, J. Spencer, C. Porco, T. Johnson, A. Ingersoll, W. McKinnon, C. Mackay, F. Postberg, J. Schmidt, S. Kempf and R. Pappalardo. Supplementary information accompanies this paper. | |||||||||
| Funders: |
| |||||||||
| Issue or Number: | 7250 | |||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1038/nature08070 | |||||||||
| Record Number: | CaltechAUTHORS:20090827-151916234 | |||||||||
| Persistent URL: | https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20090827-151916234 | |||||||||
| Usage Policy: | No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided. | |||||||||
| ID Code: | 15375 | |||||||||
| Collection: | CaltechAUTHORS | |||||||||
| Deposited By: | George Porter | |||||||||
| Deposited On: | 11 Sep 2009 16:30 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 08 Nov 2021 23:18 |
Repository Staff Only: item control page
