Blowing Hot and Cold: Exploring the Plumes of Io and Enceladus

Io and Enceladus
Credit
Compiled by P. Wozniakiewicz, individual components from various ESA and NASA sources.
Start Date
End Date

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Recent US Decadal Reviews and the STFC Roadmap 2022 have identified the Jovian and Saturnian systems as a major focus for future missions. Indeed at Jupiter, the Juno spacecraft is currently in orbit, Juice is on the way there, and Europa Clipper should launch in Oct. 2024. There are also proposals for future sample return missions to Io. In parallel, Cassini data from the Saturnian system is still being analysed and several major mission proposals have recently been prepared for new visits to the Saturn including a focus on Enceladus. There is thus a wealth of information on both Io and Enceladus, two very different worlds, but both of which (for very different reasons) have plumes ejecting material from their interiors into space.

  • Io is the most volcanically active body known, and its (hot) plumes offer a window into the mineral wealth of its interior.
  • Enceladus is an icy ocean world, and its (cold) plumes offer insights into the contents of its internal ocean.

Requests for talks/posters are invited on all topics relating to either body. In particular they are sought about:

  • our current understanding of these bodies,
  • how plumes can be best sampled in future missions and what such sampling missions might reveal,
  • and how what we learn about the evolution of the bodies can illuminate the development of small planets/satellites in general.

Requests for talks/posters should have a title, clearly identify both the proposed presenter and all authors (and their affiliations) and the accompanying text should be no more than 1 page of A4 (and can include references if desired). Please send these to Prof. Mark Burchell, m.j.burchell@kent.ac.uk by Oct 15th, 2024, at the latest.

Any enquiries about the meeting should also be made to Mark Burchell (m.j.burchell@kent.ac.uk).

 

Programme 

10:25 Welcome, general introduction. 

Morning Session: Enceladus 

10:30 – 11:00 Nozair Khawaja (Univ. of Stuttgart and Freie-Univ. Berlin) – Invited talk: Enceladus as a Potential Oasis for Extraterrestrial Life. 

11:00 – 11:15 Jürgen Schmidt (Freie-Univ. Berlin): The Enceladus Dust Plume from the Cassini Cosmic Dust Analyzer. 

11:15 – 11:30 Thomas R. O’Sullivan (Freie-Univ. Berlin):  On the dissociation behaviour of singly-substituted monocyclic aromatics in impact ionisation mass spectrometry and implications for the Enceladus subsurface. 

11:30 – 11:45 Anna Parsec-Wallis (Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Univ. College London): Further analysis into the plumes of Enceladus. 

11:45 – 12:00 Mark G. Fox-Powell (Open Univ.): Salt composition is a proxy for ice grain freezing rate in cryovolcanic plumes. 

12:00 – 12:15 Steve Armes (Univ. of Sheffield): Synthesis of phenanthrene/pyrene hybrid microparticles: useful synthetic mimics for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon-based cosmic dust. 

12:15 – 12:30 Min Zeng (Univ. of Sheffield): New Synthetic Mimic for Micrometer-sized Nitrogen-based Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Cosmic Dust.  

12:30 – 12:45 Gillian Sclater (Birbeck, Univ. of London): Modelling dissociating clathrates in the cryovolcanic vents of Enceladus.   

12:45 – 13:00 Poster talks: Angus Aldis (Open Univ.), Jessica Hogan (Open Univ.), and Duncan Lyster (Oxford Univ.) will briefly introduce their posters (titles listed below) which will be on display during lunch. 

Lunch  

13:00 – 14:00 including display of posters as listed below: 

Angus Aldis (Open Univ.) Bubbles are rockets for microbes; predicting microbial dispersion in Enceladus’s plumes based on bubbling in Iceland’s geothermal springs.  

Jessica Hogan (Open Univ.) Low-pressure freezing times of liquid droplets relevant to plume-forming regions on Enceladus. 

Duncan G. Lyster (Oxford Univ.) Enceladus Thermal Mapper – A Multiband Radiometer for Global Mapping of Enceladus' Thermal Environment. 

Afternoon Session: Io 

14:00 – 14:30 Ryan Ogliore (The Washington Univ., St. Louis) – Invited talk: Io Plumes: Pyroclasts and How to Collect Them. 

14:30 – 14:50 Lionel Wilson (Lancaster Univ.). Explosive volcanic eruptions on bodies with negligible atmospheres: Application to Io. (Online talk) 

14:50 – 15:05 Mark Burchell (Univ. of Kent): Orbits at Io: Types, encounter speeds and peak shock pressures. 

15:05– 15:25 Xiaodong Liu (Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, China): The quantity and distribution of stream particles deposited on Jupiter's icy moons. (Online talk) 

15:25 – 15:30 Concluding Remarks 

 

Organisers:

Dr. Penelope J. Wozniakiewicz1 (p.j.wozniakiewicz@kent.ac.uk), Prof. Mark J. Burchell1 (m.j.burchell@kent.ac.uk) and Prof. Andrew Coates2 (a.coates@ulc.ac.uk )

1 School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NH, UK.

2 Dept. Space and Climate Physic, MSSL, UCL, Holmbury St. Mary, Dorking RH5 6NT.

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Venue Address

The Royal Astronomical Society, Burlington House

Map

51.5085763, -0.13960799999995