The topography of Enceladus

The surface of Enceladus modeled so far has relief of not more than ~2 km both at small (10 km) and larger (100 km) scales. This suggests that the lithosphere has been at most only a few kilometers thick over its history. A stereo-derived height model of the region between Enceladus’ leading side and the Saturnfacing side (Fig. 2) strengthens the role of warm ice upwellings in forming large-scale topography on Enceladus. We observe a 250 km-scale bulge up to 1 km high that correlates with its geologic boundary. The bulge is consistent with the presence of convection-related warm ice at depth isostatically adjusted to surrounding cooler, non-convective regions