Enceladus:
Resurfaced Moon of Saturn
- It's neighbors are heavily cratered iceballs:
- A modest-sized satellite of complex geology.
- Diameter is 500 km (311 miles).
- Widespread regions of old cratered terrain has:
- Either melted smooth.
- Or flooded with watery material into smooth ice plains.
- Smooth plains lacking craters indicates younger terrain.
- The plains formed in last half or quarter of the history of Encladus.
- Random long, straight lines cross the plains.
- Both flooding and fracturing indicate heat source since the time of cratering.
- Heat source may come from tidal flexing.
- The moon's icy surface reflects more than 90% of the sunlight that hits it.
- It is extraordinarily bright - the most reflective ice in the Solar System.
- The ice may be unusually pure, lacking sooty carbonaceous dirt common in outer system ices.
- The crystalline structre may be unusual affecting the reflectivity of the ice.
- Encladus orbits at the same distance from Saturn as the E-ring.
- Particles forming the ring may have blown off the satellite.
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