Alpha Centauri's Universe: Exploration Of Enceladus, Saturn

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Planetary Profile:

Saturn Lithograph From NASA
[Download]

Discovered by:
William Herschel

Date of discovery:
1789

Distance from Jupiter:
238,020 km

Radius:
256.3x247.3x244.6 km

Mass:
7 x 10²²g

Orbital eccentricity:
0.00452

Orbital inclination:
0.00 degree

Orbital period:
1.370217855 days

Rotational period:
Synchronous

Natural Satellites Of Saturn
Click on links to learn more about
the moons of Saturn.

.....Enceladus [en-SELL-ah-dus] is one of the innermost moons of Saturn. It is quite similar in size to Mimas but has a smoother, brighter surface. Enceladus reflects almost 100 percent of the sunlight that strikes it. Unlike Mimas, Enceladus displays at least five different types of terrain. Parts of Enceladus shows craters no larger than 35 km in diameter. Other areas show regions with no craters indicating major resurfacing events in the geologically recent past. There are fissures, plains, corrugated terrain and other crustal deformations. All of this indicates that that interior of the moon may be liquid today, even though it should have frozen aeons ago. It is postulated that Enceladus is heated by a tidal mechanism similar to Jupiter's moon Io. It is perturbed in its orbit by Saturn's gravitational field and by the large neighboring satellites Tethys and Dione. Because Enceladus reflects so much sunlight, the surface temperature is only -201° C (-330° F).