Constraining the Enceladus plume using numerical simulation and Cassini data

•We model the gas component of the Enceladus plume using detailed gas dynamics.•We constrain the model using several INMS and UVIS data sets.•We estimate H2O production rates of a few hundred kgs−1 from the plume.•Narrow emissions produce better fits to data, suggesting a subsurface origin.•The distributed Tiger Stripe sources are likely dominant while the jets provide a lesser contribution. Since its discovery, the Enceladus plume has been subjected to intense study due to the major effects that it has on the Saturnian system and the window that it provides into the interior of Enceladus. However, several questions remain and we attempt to answer some of them in this work. In particular, we aim to constrain the H2O production rate from the plume, evaluate the relative importance of the jets and the distributed sources along the Tiger Stripes, and make inferences about the source of the plume by accurately modeling the plume and constraining the model using the Cassini INMS and UVIS data. This is an extension of a previous work (Yeoh, S.K., et al. [2015] Icarus, 253, 205–222) in which we only modeled the collisional part of the Enceladus plume and studied its important physical processes. In this work, we propagate the plume farther into space where the flow has become free-molecular and the Cassini INMS and UVIS data were sampled. Then, we fit this part of the plume to the INMS H2O density distributions sampled along the E3, E5 and E7 trajectories and also compare some of the fit results with the UVIS measurements of the plume optical depth collected during the solar occultation observation on 18 May 2010. We consider several vent conditions and source configurations for the plume. By constraining our model using the INMS and UVIS data, we estimate H2O production rates of several hundred kgs-1: 400–500kg/s during the E3 and E7 flybys and ∼900kg/s during the E5 flyby. These values agree with other estimates and are consistent with the observed temporal variability of the plume over the orbital period of Enceladus (Hedman, M.M., et al. [2013] Nature, 500, 182–184). In addition, we determine that one of the Tiger Stripes, Cairo, exhibits a local temporal variability consistent with the observed overall temporal variability of the plume. We also find that the distributed sources along the Tiger Stripes are likely dominant while the jets provide a lesser contribution. Moreover, our best-fit solutions for the plume are sensitive to the vent conditions chosen. T