BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Fascinating Facts about Saturn's Moons *new*

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 a moon that could possibly sustain primitive life.

Fascinating Facts about Saturn's Moons


This article has replaced an old one on Saturn's moons, using more up-to-date information from the Cassini mission.

Titan is the only object in the Solar System besides Earth that has bodies of liquid on the surface. On Earth the liquid is water. Titan's seas and lakes are made of liquid methane.

Here's a picture of Saturn's moon Mimas. Remind you of anything? Well, unless you're a fan of the original Star Wars, probably not.

But here is the diabolical Death Star with which the forces of The Empire destroyed the planet Alderaan.

As it happens, poor Mimas was the victim of a massive impact, not the aggressor. What we see in the photo is a giant impact crater named Herschel, after William Herschel who discovered Mimas. The crater is 130 km (81 mi) wide, almost a third the size of the of the little moon diameter.

Saturn has lots of moons – more than five dozen of them with confirmed orbits. They are remarkable in many ways, but perhaps the strangest one is the misshapen and unpredictable Hyperion.

Hyperion – Saturn's Weird Wobbly Moon

Hyperion's orbit ought to be quite circular and the moon tidally locked to Jupiter. Nope, not at all. It's completely messed up by the pull of Titan and its rotation varies so unpredictably that when Cassini did flybys, no one could predict which side of Hyperion it would see and which surface features would be visible.

Cassini image of Saturn’s main rings, the F Ring, and its shepherd moons. The narrow F Ring is located just outside of the outer edge of the main rings. The two moons sandwiching the F Ring slightly above and to the left of the centre of the image are the shepherd satellites Prometheus (inner orbit) and Pandora (outer orbit).

Image credit: NASA / Kobe University.

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