Key facts
- Scale fact
- 504 kmmean diameter
- Estimated age
- ~4.5 billion years
- Composition
- Water ice, silicate rock, global salty ocean
- Temperature
- ~72 K surface
Enceladus
504 kmmean diameter
Visual creditCassini 2005 / NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute / Public domainSource: Wikimedia Commons
Details
Enceladus is a small icy moon of Saturn whose south polar fractures spray water vapor and ice particles into space. Cassini connected those plumes to a global salty ocean beneath the crust, making Enceladus one of the Solar System's clearest ocean-world targets.
Cassini traced jets of water vapor and ice grains to fractures near Enceladus’s south pole. Gravity, libration and plume measurements together support a global salty ocean beneath the ice, and some of the expelled material supplies Saturn’s E ring.
Because a spacecraft can sample those plumes without drilling, Cassini could detect salts, organic compounds, silica grains and phosphorus linked to water–rock chemistry below. These are ingredients and energy-relevant processes associated with habitability; they are not evidence that life has been found.
Links
- Universe journey
- Asteroid belt & Jupiter
- Wikipedia
- Enceladus on Wikipedia
Size neighbors
Objects near Enceladus on the scale
Sources
References for Enceladus
Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, please let us know.
- Enceladus — Wikipedia
- Visual reference: Wikimedia Commons (Cassini 2005 / NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute, Public domain)
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About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides explain selected parts of that range, while focused views filter the objects by subject.