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An annotated picture of Saturn's many moons captured by the Cassini spacecraft. Shown in the image are Dione, Enceladus, Epimetheus, Prometheus, Mimas, Rhea, Janus, Tethys and Titan. The moons of Saturn are numerous and diverse, ranging from tiny moonlets only tens of meters across to the enormous Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury.
Of the Solar System's eight planets and its nine most likely dwarf planets, six planets and seven dwarf planets are known to be orbited by at least 300 natural satellites, or moons. At least 19 of them are large enough to be gravitationally rounded; of these, all are covered by a crust of ice except for Earth's Moon and Jupiter's Io . [ 1 ]
Pandora is an inner satellite of Saturn. It was discovered in 1980 from photos taken by the Voyager 1 probe and was provisionally designated S/1980 S 26. [5] In late 1985, it was officially named after Pandora from Greek mythology. [6] It is also designated as Saturn XVII. [7] Pandora was thought to be an outer shepherd satellite of the F Ring.
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]
It is Saturn's ninth-largest moon, but it is the eighth-most massive. Hyperion, another one of Saturn's moons, has a larger radius, but is less massive than Phoebe. Phoebe rotates every nine hours and 16 minutes, and completes a full orbit around Saturn in about 18 months. Its surface temperature is on average 75 K (−198.2 °C).
The new discovery increases the moons orbiting the "jewel of our solar system" to 82, surpassing Jupiter 20 new moons were discovered around Saturn Skip to main content
The giant planets have extensive systems of natural satellites, including half a dozen comparable in size to Earth's Moon: the four Galilean moons, Saturn's Titan, and Neptune's Triton. Saturn has an additional six mid-sized natural satellites massive enough to have achieved hydrostatic equilibrium , and Uranus has five.
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.