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Saturn’s Moons Questions, Answers, and Cool Things to Think About

Discovering Saturn:The Real Lord of the Rings Saturn’s Moons

Next you look up at the in One moon, called (en-CELL- the , imagine what it would be uh-dus), is one of the shiniest objects like to live on a with more than 60 in the . It’s about as wide moons! That’s how many we’ve found so as Arizona, and it’s covered in that far orbiting Saturn. There might be even more that we haven’t discovered yet. . That makes it extremely

No one knew that Saturn had any moons until 1655, when a Dutch named Christiaan pointed a at the giant and saw time. During the since then, as people built more powerful and sent robot explorers into , we discovered more and more moons around Saturn. We’ve found more than 60 so far, and it’s possible that the about 330 degrees below zero on the will discover even more as it scale! The icy particles that the planet until 2017. make up Saturn’s E ring came from vol- canoes or ice on this moon. Most of Saturn’s moons are much smaller than ’s Moon. But they are Another moon, (MY-muss), has a strange and fascinating in many ways. giant crater that is one-third as wide Some of them help to keep Saturn’s fa- as the moon itself. In the center of mous rings together. The rings are made the crater is a mountain as tall as some up of millions of icy stones and specks of the biggest mountains on Earth. of dust, and from some of the

Two other moons, (ep-uh- away from the rings, much like a shep- ME-thee-us) and (JAY-nuss), herd keeps sheep from wandering away trade orbits with each other every few

called “shepherd moons.” Saturn’s Moons

, taking turns being closer to the itan’s surface is hidden beneath a planet. T thick, deep-orange haze. But can “see” through the haze, and scientists (-A-pe-tus) may be the on Earth using a powerful radar system strangest of Saturn’s moons. It looks to bounce off the giant like a big that’s chocolate on one moon found what they thought might side and vanilla on the other side! be huge or on . But there was no clear evidence yet. Some scientists think a moon called (fee-bee) may have started out The Huygens probe, named after the far beyond , and wandered billions astronomer who discovered Titan, was of toward the until it was carried by the Cassini spacecraft to captured by Saturn’s gravity. Titan is Saturn. The probe parachuted to Titan by far Saturn’s biggest moon. It’s the through the murky , sending largest moon in the whole solar system. (The largest one, , is probe’s landing site looked as though it in around .) Titan is bigger than the planet !

Images by Cassini Saturn’s Moons

Then, in 2007, Cassini mission scien- tists announced the Cassini’s imaging radar system had discovered more than 75 lakes on Titan. These lakes of . Titan is so cold that water there is frozen as hard as rock!

We now know that Titan has an active and complex, Earth-like processes. Titan resembles a very cold version of Earth as our planet was sev- eral billion years ago.

Which of Saturn’s moons would you Jet Propulsion Laboratory most like to visit? Why?

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