BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Saturn's amazing moons

Saturn lies in the outer Solar System, ten times farther away from the Sun than Earth is. It's best known for its fabulous ring system, but it also has an amazing system of moons including ring shepherds and the smallest natural round body in the Solar System.

10 Amazing Facts about Saturn's Moons

Rhea was Saturn's wife in classical mythology. Rhea the moon zips around Saturn in four and a half days. Although it has an oxygen atmosphere, we won't be moving there anytime soon. Even in direct sunlight, it's -281 degrees Fahrenheit and the "atmosphere" is similar to a vacuum on Earth.

Rhea - Moon of Saturn

Titan was a mystery for three and a half centuries. It's a giant moon shrouded in impenetrable clouds, and has only recently begun to share its secrets. Why do scientists say it's like Earth? Is it time to book a vacation to visit the lakes and mountains of Titan?

Titan Titan - Planet-sized Moon of Saturn

Last month Cassini imaging showed red streaks on the moon Tethys. You can see it in the enhanced-color image. What are the streaks? There are various guesses, but no one knows.

Christina Sng has the answer to the mystery of the red streaks on Tethys. She's supplied Astronomers without Borders a little poem: Found on Tethys

Hi Mona,

It is so frustrating! Pin Interest won't let you read anything unless you belong or whatever. I am not a friend of these types of companies that force membership to access material.

Is there another way you can show the info or another site Dr Google will help with?

Anyway.

Cheers

Lestie, you're quite right about Pinterest. So annoying. I don't know when it took up doing this, but a friend alerted me to it only recently. Since then I've tried to use direct URLs in the forum, but slipped up here.

Unfortunately, my article links are all to Pinterest - because it was a way of ensuring that the links didn't break every time NASA and others reorganised their websites. (I'm not sure what to do now.)

Anyhow Found on Tethys by Christina Sng looks as though it meant to be a haiku, but It seems to be slightly oversyllabled, if so.

FOUND ON TETHYS
OLD MOON GRAFFITI
FROM TITAN'S LAST VISIT
FORGOT THE WASHABLE MARKER

This is superimposed on the picture of red streaks on Tethys.

This is a recent Cassini image of Saturn's moon Dione. The trailing hemisphere is distinguished by bright ice cliffs, some of them several hundred meters high.

This view of Saturn's icy moon Dione is of the leading hemisphere, and it's quite different to the terrain in the image I linked to in the previous post. You can also see Saturn and its rings in the background. The photo was taken just as Cassini was about to make its final close approach to the moon a few days ago.

If you look to the lower right, you can see an impact basin with several rings around it. It's 350 km (220 mi) wide. To the lower left is Padua Chasma, which is on the edge of the bright terrain of ice cliffs shown in the post I did yesterday. The canyons reach into the darkness along the lower left edge.

It's a mosaic made from nine visible light images. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI, released 2015-08-20)

It was 226 years ago yesterday (August 28, 1789) that William Herschel discovered Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Enceladus was a mythical giant, but this moon is no giant - it's only 500 km in diameter. NASA's Cassini probe took this image, showing a cryovolcanic eruption.. Instead of hot lava, it shoots out icy water with some gases mixed in.

It was William Herschel's son John - a prominent scientist in is day - who named the moons of Saturn.