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A salt-water reservoir as the source of a compositionally stratified plume on Enceladus

Kempf, S.; Postberg, F.; Srama, R. +2 more

The discovery of a plume of water vapour and ice particles emerging from warm fractures (`tiger stripes') in Saturn's small, icy moon Enceladus raised the question of whether the plume emerges from a subsurface liquid source or from the decomposition of ice. Previous compositional analyses of particles injected by the plume into Saturn's diffuse E…

A giant thunderstorm on Saturn

Gurnett, D. A.; Kurth, W. S.; Delcroix, M. +8 more

Lightning discharges in Saturn's atmosphere emit radio waves with intensities about 10,000 times stronger than those of their terrestrial counterparts. These radio waves are the characteristic features of lightning from thunderstorms on Saturn, which last for days to months. Convective storms about 2,000 kilometres in size have been observed in re…

Deep winds beneath Saturn's upper clouds from a seasonal long-lived planetary-scale storm

Phillips, J.; Hueso, R.; Sánchez-Lavega, A. +40 more

Convective storms occur regularly in Saturn's atmosphere. Huge storms known as Great White Spots, which are ten times larger than the regular storms, are rarer and occur about once per Saturnian year (29.5 Earth years). Current models propose that the outbreak of a Great White Spot is due to moist convection induced by water. However, the generati…

The auroral footprint of Enceladus on Saturn

Dougherty, Michele K.; Zhou, Xiaoyan; Saur, Joachim +26 more

Although there are substantial differences between the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, it has been suggested that cryovolcanic activity at Enceladus could lead to electrodynamic coupling between Enceladus and Saturn like that which links Jupiter with Io, Europa and Ganymede. Powerful field-aligned electron beams associated with the Io-Jupite…

Saturn: Storm-clouds brooding on towering heights

Read, Peter

Springtime on Saturn came in with a bang last December, when a massive storm erupted in its north temperate zone. This rare event has been observed in unprecedented detail from the ground and from space. See Letters p.71 & p.75