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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]
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.
The two named craters on Deimos. Features on Deimos are named after authors who wrote about Martian satellites. There are currently two named features on Deimos – Swift crater and Voltaire crater – after Jonathan Swift and Voltaire who predicted the presence of Martian moons.
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]
The extra pull of Earth's gravity decreases the object's orbital period, and at the L 2 point, that orbital period becomes equal to Earth's. Like L 1, L 2 is about 1.5 million kilometers or 0.01 au from Earth (away from the sun). An example of a spacecraft designed to operate near the Earth–Sun L 2 is the James Webb Space Telescope. [8]
Janus / ˈ dʒ eɪ n ə s / is an inner satellite of Saturn.It is also known as Saturn X.It is named after the mythological Janus.This natural satellite was first identified by Audouin Dollfus on December 15, 1966, although it had been unknowingly photographed earlier by Jean Texereau.
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 ...
Phoebe (/ ˈ f iː b i / FEE-bee) is the most massive irregular satellite of Saturn with a mean diameter of 213 km (132 mi). It was discovered by William Henry Pickering on 18 March 1899 [9] from photographic plates that had been taken by DeLisle Stewart starting on 16 August 1898 at the Boyden Station of the Carmen Alto Observatory near Arequipa, Peru.