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An artist's impression of Rhea's rings. The density of the particles is exaggerated greatly to aid visibility. [1] Rhea, the second-largest moon of Saturn, may have a tenuous ring system consisting of three narrow, relatively dense bands within a particulate disk. This would be the first discovery of rings around a moon.
It is estimated that the A Ring contains 7,000–8,000 propellers larger than 0.8 km in size and millions larger than 0.25 km. [4] In April 2014, NASA scientists reported the possible consolidation of a new moon within the A Ring, implying that Saturn's present moons may have formed in a similar process in the past when Saturn's ring system was ...
The moon was named in 2006 after Daphnis, a shepherd, pipes player, and pastoral poet in Greek mythology; [8] he was descendant of the Titans, after whom the largest moons of Saturn are named. Both Daphnis and Pan, the only other known shepherd moon to orbit within Saturn's main rings, are named for mythological figures associated with shepherds.
Saturn has 53 known moons, with an additional 29 moons awaiting confirmation. That's a total of 82 moons. Saturn has the most spectacular ring system, with seven rings and several gaps and ...
Equatorial ridges are a feature of at least three of Saturn's moons: the large moon Iapetus and the tiny moons Atlas and Pan. They are ridges that closely follow the moons' equators. They appear to be unique to the Saturnian system, but it is uncertain whether the occurrences are related or a coincidence.
The moon would have been torn apart by Saturn's tidal forces, somewhere between 200 and 100 million years ago. Up to 99% of the moon's mass would have been swallowed by Saturn, with the remaining 1% forming the rings of Saturn. [2] The origin of Saturn's rings from the destruction of a satellite has been previously proposed by other authors. [3]
Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn and the 18th-largest in the Solar System. It is about 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter, [5] about a tenth of that of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. It is mostly covered by fresh, clean ice, making it one of the most reflective bodies of the Solar System.
Siarnaq is the largest member of Saturn's Inuit group of prograde irregular moons, which orbit far from Saturn in the same direction as the planet's rotation. The moons of the Inuit group are believed to have originated as fragments from the collisional breakup of a larger progenitor moon after it was gravitationally captured into orbit around ...