Saturn'S Moons

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Saturn’s Moons The planet of Saturn is an amazing planet as far as moons go. This planet is currently known to have fifty-two moons. Some of these moons are spherical in shape much like Earth’s moon and some look to be no more than a meteor that was captured by the huge planet. Now I’m not going to be able to discuss every moon that belongs to Saturn but I will talk about the six biggest which are: Titan, Rhea, Iapetus, Dione, Tethys, and Enceladus. All of Saturn’s moons were named after Greek Mythological figures. These moons of Saturn are very important to astronomers because it may be some object on one of these satellites that might open the door to the answers of some of biggest questions in space science today. Titan is the biggest and most interesting of all of Saturn’s moons. Titan is the largest of Saturn’s moon with a diameter of 5,150 kilometers and is 1,221,850 kilometers from the surface of Saturn. It takes nearly 16 days for Titan to orbit all the way around Saturn. Titan is the only known moon in our solar system to have a dense atmosphere, and the only object other than Earth that has evidence of bodies of water. Titan is the sixth moon from Saturn. Titan is a very planet like moon; its diameter is about 50% larger than Earth's moon and is nearly 80% more massive. It is the second largest moon in the Solar System, the largest is Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, and it is larger by volume than Mercury. Titan was the first known moon of Saturn. It was discovered in 1655 by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens. Titan is mostly composed of ice and rocky material. Because Titan has such a dense atmosphere scientists had a lot of trouble studying the surface of the large moon. This was until 2004 when the Cassini–Huygens mission was launched. The purpose of this mission was to observe and study Saturn and Titan by using fly-by’s. The fly-by’s that have

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