Saturn has 60 confirmed moons, with seven being large enough to be considered dwarf planets. Five were discovered in the 17th century, and 53 more have been discovered since. Saturn’s most famous moon is Titan, with its own atmosphere, and the Cassini orbiter launched a probe to its surface in 2004. Iapetus has a unique appearance with a bright white side and pitch-black side, and a ridge that circles the equator. Saturn’s rings are composed of dust and rocks, and some moons serve as “shepherds” to sculpt them.
Saturn, the second largest planet in the Solar System and the sixth farthest from the Sun, has sixty confirmed moons, just three fewer than its neighbor, regal Jupiter. Seven of these moons are large enough to be approximately spherical, having reached hydrostatic equilibrium, and would be considered dwarf planets if they orbited the Sun. These moons are Titan, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Iapetus, Mimas, and Enceladus.
Five of Saturn’s moons were discovered in the first century of the telescope. Titan was first discovered by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens in 1655. This discovery was followed by the observations of Tethys, Dione, Rhea and Iapetus between 1671 and 1684 by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini. A probe that arrived in the Saturn system in 2004 was named Cassini in his honor. In 1789 Mimas and Enceladus, the remaining spheroid moons, were discovered by William Hershel.
Since then, 53 more moons around Saturn have been discovered through a combination of the use of long-exposure photographic plates, space probes and powerful modern telescopes. These moons have diameters ranging up to about four kilometers. Saturn is also home to at least eight “moons” with diameters of a few hundred meters, and there are thought to be thousands yet to be discovered.
Saturn is surrounded by numerous rings composed of dust and rocks ranging from nanometers to tens if not hundreds of meters in diameter. There are tenuous clumps of ring material that come together and break apart on timescales of weeks. Some moons are explicitly called “shepherds of the rings,” which serve to sculpt Saturn’s rings and give them sharp edges through their gravitational influence.
Saturn’s most famous moon is Titan, with a diameter of 5151 km, making it the second largest moon in the Solar System, just behind Jupiter’s Ganymede. This moon is massive enough to support its own atmosphere, the only moon in the Solar System to have achieved this. Its atmosphere is made of hydrocarbons and is even denser than ours. In 2004, the Cassini orbiter launched the Huygens probe into Titan’s atmosphere, where it became the first man-made object to land on the surface of an outer solar system body.
Another of Saturn’s more interesting moons is Iapetus, sometimes called the “yin-yang” moon for its bright white side and pitch-black side. This moon also has an unusual ridge that circles the equator, following it almost exactly, and rises to a height of 10km, giving the moon the appearance of a walnut.
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