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Like most of Saturn's larger satellites, Enceladus rotates synchronously with its orbital period, keeping one face pointed toward Saturn. Unlike Earth's Moon, Enceladus does not appear to librate more than 1.5° about its spin axis.
True polar wander is a solid-body rotation (or reorientation) of a planet or moon with respect to its spin axis, causing the geographic locations of the north and south poles to change, or "wander". In rotational equilibrium, a planetary body has the largest moment of inertia axis aligned with the spin axis, with the smaller two moments of ...
While on short timescales the satellite approximately rotates around its long axis at a rate of 72–75° per day, on longer timescales its axis of rotation (spin vector) wanders chaotically across the sky. [78] This makes the rotational behavior of Hyperion essentially unpredictable. [79] Iapetus is the third-largest of Saturn's moons. [53]
Enceladus' south pole, captured by NASA's Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, 2015. The Enceladus Orbilander is a proposed NASA Flagship mission to Saturn's moon Enceladus.The Enceladus Orbilander would spend a year and a half orbiting Enceladus and sampling its water plumes, which stretch into space, before landing on the surface for a two-year mission to study materials for evidence of life. [1]
Planet e might be in a low-order resonance (of 2:3, 3:5, 1:2, or 1:3) with planet b. The system is very young (23±4 Myr) and might be a precursor of a compact multiplanet system. The 2:3 resonance suggests that some close-in planets may either form in resonances or evolve into them on timescales of less than 10 Myr.
Saturn's moon Mimas, for example, has a major axis 9% greater than its polar axis and 5% greater than its other equatorial axis. Methone, another of Saturn's moons, is only around 3 km in diameter and visibly egg-shaped. The effect is smaller on the largest natural satellites, where their gravity is greater relative to the effects of tidal ...
Anthe / ˈ æ n θ iː / is a very small natural satellite of Saturn lying between the orbits of Mimas and Enceladus. It is also known as Saturn XLIX; its provisional designation was S/2007 S 4. It is named after one of the Alkyonides; the name means flowery. It is the sixtieth confirmed moon of Saturn. [5]
The plasma composition in Saturn's inner magnetosphere is dominated by the water group ions: O +, H 2 O +, OH + and others, hydronium ion (H 3 O +), HO 2 + and O 2 +, [4] although protons and nitrogen ions (N +) are also present. [25] [26] The main source of water is Enceladus, which releases 300–600 kg/s of water vapor from the geysers near ...