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Mimas, also designated Saturn I, is the seventh-largest natural satellite of Saturn.With a mean diameter of 396.4 kilometres or 246.3 miles, Mimas is the smallest astronomical body known to be roughly rounded in shape due to its own gravity.
Saturn is named after the Roman god of wealth and agriculture, who was the father of the god Jupiter.Its astronomical symbol has been traced back to the Greek Oxyrhynchus Papyri, where it can be seen to be a Greek kappa-rho ligature with a horizontal stroke, as an abbreviation for Κρονος (), the Greek name for the planet (). [35]
According to the IAU's explicit count, there are eight planets in the Solar System; four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) and four giant planets, which can be divided further into two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). When excluding the Sun, the four giant planets account for more than ...
In the 17th century, Galileo publicized the use of the telescope in astronomy; he and Simon Marius independently discovered that Jupiter had four satellites in orbit around it. [285] Christiaan Huygens followed on from these observations by discovering Saturn's moon Titan and the shape of the rings of Saturn. [286]
Before the advent of telescopic photography, eight moons of Saturn were discovered by direct observation using optical telescopes.Saturn's largest moon, Titan, was discovered in 1655 by Christiaan Huygens using a 57-millimeter (2.2 in) objective lens [14] on a refracting telescope of his own design. [15]
NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which explored Saturn and its icy moons, including the majestic Titan, ended its mission with a death plunge into the giant ringed planet in 2017. Cassini's radar ...
It's just Newtonian gravity — the same thing Isaac Newton figured out a couple hundred years ago. It's just Earth has a lot more mass. There is a place where Earth and the sun's gravity balance ...
Cassini was captured by Saturn's gravity at around 8:54 pm Pacific Daylight Time on June 30, 2004. During the maneuver Cassini passed within 20,000 km (12,000 mi) of Saturn's cloud tops. When Cassini was in Saturnian orbit, departure from the Saturn system was evaluated in 2008 during end of mission planning.