Moons of Saturn
National Aeronautics and Space Administration 0 300,000,000 900,000,000 1,500,000,000 2,100,000,000 2,700,000,000 3,300,000,000 3,900,000,000 4,500,000,000 5,100,000,000 5,700,000,000 kilometers Moons of Saturn www.nasa.gov Saturn, the sixth planet from the Sun, is home to a vast array • Phoebe orbits the planet in a direction opposite that of Saturn’s • Fastest Orbit Pan of intriguing and unique satellites — 53 plus 9 awaiting official larger moons, as do several of the recently discovered moons. Pan’s Orbit Around Saturn 13.8 hours confirmation. Christiaan Huygens discovered the first known • Mimas has an enormous crater on one side, the result of an • Number of Moons Discovered by Voyager 3 moon of Saturn. The year was 1655 and the moon is Titan. impact that nearly split the moon apart. (Atlas, Prometheus, and Pandora) Jean-Dominique Cassini made the next four discoveries: Iapetus (1671), Rhea (1672), Dione (1684), and Tethys (1684). Mimas and • Enceladus displays evidence of active ice volcanism: Cassini • Number of Moons Discovered by Cassini 6 Enceladus were both discovered by William Herschel in 1789. observed warm fractures where evaporating ice evidently es- (Methone, Pallene, Polydeuces, Daphnis, Anthe, and Aegaeon) The next two discoveries came at intervals of 50 or more years capes and forms a huge cloud of water vapor over the south — Hyperion (1848) and Phoebe (1898). pole. ABOUT THE IMAGES As telescopic resolving power improved, Saturn’s family of • Hyperion has an odd flattened shape and rotates chaotically, 1 2 3 1 Cassini’s visual known moons grew.
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