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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]
The seven largest natural satellites in the Solar System (those bigger than 2,500 km across) are Jupiter's Galilean moons (Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa), Saturn's moon Titan, Earth's moon, and Neptune's captured natural satellite Triton. Triton, the smallest of these, has more mass than all smaller natural satellites together.
Scientists previously thought Mimas was just a big chunk of ice before NASA’s Cassini mission studied Saturn and some of its 146 moons by orbiting the ringed planet between 2004 and 2017.
The four outer planets, called giant planets or Jovian planets, collectively make up 99% of the mass orbiting the Sun. [h] All four giant planets have multiple moons and a ring system, although only Saturn's rings are easily observed from Earth. [91] Jupiter and Saturn are composed mainly of gases with extremely low melting points, such as ...
Research finds ammonia and inorganic phosphorus in Enceladus’ ocean
Size of Saturn compared to Earth and Earth's Moon. Saturn is a gas giant, composed predominantly of hydrogen and helium. It lacks a definite surface, though it is likely to have a solid core. [37] The planet's rotation makes it an oblate spheroid—a ball flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator.
Two moons have significant atmospheres: Saturn's moon Titan and Neptune's moon Triton. A tenuous atmosphere exists around Mercury. The effects of the rotation rate of a planet about its axis can be seen in atmospheric streams and currents. Seen from space, these features show as bands and eddies in the cloud system and are particularly visible ...