About Saturn & Its Moons. Introduction On June 30, 2004, the Cassini spacecraft entered orbit around Saturn to begin the first in-depth, up-close study of the ringed planet and its domain. As expected, the Saturn System has provided an incredible wealth of opportunities for exploration and discovery. With its initial four-year tour of the Saturn system complete as well as an initial two-year extended mission called the Cassini Equinox Mission, the spacecraft is conducting a second extended mission called the Cassini Solstice Mission. "We're looking at a string of remarkable discoveries -- about Saturn's magnificent rings, its amazing moons, its dynamic magnetosphere and about Titan's surface and atmosphere," says Dr.
Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist. Cassini's observations of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, have given scientists a glimpse of what Earth might have been like before life evolved. Why the "Cassini Solstice Mission? " Science Objectives. NSSDC Photo Gallery: Saturn. Space Science - Saturn and Titan.
Saturn and Titan, side by side Saturn and Titan 5 March 2012 Titan, Saturn’s largest moon at 5150 km across, looks small here, pictured to the right of the gas giant in this infrared image taken by the Cassini spacecraft. Saturn’s rings appear across the top of the image, casting shadows onto the planet across the middle of the image. A much smaller moon, Prometheus, 86 km across, appears as a tiny white speck above the rings in the far upper right of the image. The shadow of another moon, Pandora, 100 km at its widest, can be seen below the ring shadows towards the right side of the planet.
Cassini’s wide-angle camera captured the view on 5 January, while it was about 685 000 km from Saturn. Saturn: Moons. Saturn, the sixth planet from the sun, is home to a vast array of intriguing and unique worlds. From the cloud-shrouded surface of Titan to crater-riddled Phoebe, each of Saturn's moons tells another piece of the story surrounding the Saturn system. Christiaan Huygens discovered the first known moon of Saturn. The year was 1655 and the moon was Titan. Giovanni Domenico Cassini made the next four discoveries: Iapetus (1671), Rhea (1672), Dione (1684), and Tethys (1684). As telescopic resolving power increased through the 19th century, Saturn's family of known moons grew.
We've discovered a total of 53 natural satellites orbiting Saturn. Here's a sampling of some of the unique aspects of the moons: - Titan is so large that it affects the orbits of other near-by moons. . - Iapetus has one side as bright as snow and one side as dark as black velvet, with a huge ridge running around most of its dark-side equator. - Four moons orbit in stable places around Saturn called Lagrangian points. Space Science - Saturn and Titan. Saturn's Moons. Saturn's Moons The dozens of icy moons orbiting Saturn vary drastically in shape, size, surface age and origin. Some of these worlds have hard, rough surfaces, while others are porous bodies coated in a fine blanket of icy particles.
All have greater or smaller numbers of craters, and many have ridges and valleys. Some, like Dione and Tethys, show evidence of tectonic activity, where forces from within ripped apart their surfaces. Many, like Rhea and Tethys, appear to have formed billions of years ago, while others, like Janus and Epimetheus, could have originally been part of larger bodies that broke up. The study and comparison of these moons tells us a great deal about the history of the Saturn System and of the solar system at large. To date, 53 moons have been officially named. Astronomers continue to find new small moons orbiting Saturn, using both ground-based observatories and Cassini's own imaging cameras. Diversity of Worlds The moons of Saturn are a diverse collection. Moons of Saturn. Artist's concepts of the Saturnian ring–moon system Saturn, its rings and major icy moons—from Mimas to Rhea Images of several moons of Saturn. From left to right: Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea; Titan in the background; Iapetus (top) and irregularly shaped Hyperion (bottom).
Some small moons are also shown. All to scale. The rings of Saturn are made up of objects ranging in size from microscopic to moonlets hundreds of meters across, each in its own orbit about the planet.[7] Thus a precise number of Saturnian moons cannot be given, as there is no objective boundary between the countless small anonymous objects that form Saturn's ring system and the larger objects that have been named as moons. Over 150 moonlets embedded in the rings have been detected by the disturbance they create in the surrounding ring material, though this is thought to be only a small sample of the total population of such objects.[8] Discovery and naming[edit] Early observations[edit] Outer moons[edit]