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Saturnian System Components[]
Round Moons[]
- Mimas - Innermost large moon of Saturn. Has a distinct large crater that gives the moon the nickname the "Deathstar Moon".
- Enceladus - Second large moon of Saturn. The brightest and smoothest known body in the solar system. Has active ice geysers that feed Saturn's rings and enter its atmosphere (making it the only Moon to affect its parent's composition) and neighboring moons.
- Tethys - Large moon of Saturn. May have had an ancient subsurface ocean which froze out when interaction with Dione subsided. Ithaca Chasma may have resulted with this freeze.
- Dione - Large moon of Saturn. Interacts with Enceladus today (flexes it to maintain liquid ocean) and may have helped Tethys in the past maintain a liquid ocean.
- Rhea - Second largest moon of Saturn. A cratered icy world almost 1000 miles across. Has a tenuous oxygen-rich atmosphere created by charged particles from Saturn's magnetic field striking and splitting apart water molecules.
- Titan - Largest moon of Saturn and the only known moon to have a thick atmosphere. Only body known to have bodies of liquids on its surface other than the Earth, which are composed of hydrocarbons. Landed on by the Huygens probe and mapped by the Cassini orbiter.
- Iapetus - Outermost large moon of Saturn, only spherical one in an eccentric, inclined orbit. Has two different "faces", one very bright and the other very dark. Has mountain range across its equator which significantly distorts its spherical shape.
Large Irregular Moons[]
- Hyperion - Large irregular moon of Saturn. Sponge shaped. Spins on two axises. First irregular satellite discovered. Extremely low density and porous, may host a network of caverns within.
- Phoebe - Outermost relatively large moon of Saturn. A dark large irregular moon, thought to be a planetesimal from the Kuiper Belt. It was likely spherical in its past, is about the same density as Pluto, and has a denser core. Its composition and density are more similar to KBOs than objects of the Saturnian system. Has water ice on its surface and probably liquid water in its interior at some point in its history. First satellite discovered using photography. First moon targeted by Cassini. Source of dark hemisphere of Iapetus. Smaller fragments land on Hyperion and Titan.
Saturnian System Web Pages[]
Saturnian System In The News[]
Saturnian System Gallery[]
Size-Distance Diagram P Size-Order-Description Diagram P
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