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Enceladus


Enceladus is the eighth moon of Saturn. It is quite similar in size to Mimas but has a smoother, brighter surface. Enceladus reflects almost 100 percent of the sunlight that strikes it. Unlike Mimas, Enceladus displays at least five different types of terrain. Parts of Enceladus shows craters no larger than 35 km in diameter. Other areas show regions with no craters indicating major resurfacing events in the geologically recent past. There are fissures, plains, corrugated terrain and other crustal deformations.

The interior of the moon is liquid today, even though it should have frozen aeons ago. There is a sort of water volcanism at work. Enceladus is much too small to still be heated by the decay of radioactive material in its interior (the heat would have all dissipated long ago). It is postulated that Enceladus is heated by a tidal mechanism similar to Jupiter's moon Io. It is perturbed in its orbit by Saturn's gravitational field and by the large neighboring satellites Tethys and Dione.

Because Enceladus reflects so much sunlight, the surface temperature is only -201 degrees C.


Orbital Distance:   238,000 km (average)
Eccentricity:       0.005
Local Year:         1.370 days (1d 8h 53m 7s)
Orbital Velocity:   12.636 km/s
Inclination:        0.02°
Local Day:          1.370 days (1d 8h 53m 7s)
Axial Tilt:         n/a

Diameter:           498 km
Composition:        Ice (?)
Density:            1.13 g/cm3
Mass:               7.30 x 1016 tonnes (12/million earths)
Gravity:            0.008 G
Escape Velocity:    0.198 km/s
Area:               780,000 km2
Surface Material:   Mostly H2O ice
Atmosphere:         None
Pressure:           None
Albedo:             0.99
Temperature:        -201°C

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