WFU Physics Colloquium

TITLE: The Fountains of Enceladus

SPEAKER: Professor Duane H. Pontius, Jr.,

TIME: Thursday Feb. 28, 2008 at 4:00 PM

PLACE: George P. Williams, Jr. Lecture Hall, (Olin 101)

Saturn's moon Enceladus is one of a handful of minor satellites orbiting that planet, all overshadowed by Titan with its dense, methane-rich atmosphere. Until a few years ago, Enceladus was notable only for having the highest albedo of any known body in the solar system. Because it reflects so much sunlight, it was also estimated to have an unusually low surface temperature. Tantalizing hints of more interesting behavior came from several instruments carried by the Cassini spacecraft, including localized regions of surprisingly high temperature and anomalous perturbations in Saturn's magnetic field. On 14 July 2005, the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer found that Saturn's magnetospheric plasma is substantially deflected by this supposedly inactive moon, even at 30 satellite radii away from the surface. This talk will present those findings and interpret them in the context of magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling.