Moon's
The names of the moon's in order are: Pan, Atlas,Promethevs, Janus, Pandora,Epimethevs, Epimethevs, Mimus, Enceladus, Telesto, Calypso, Tethys, Helene, Dione, Rhea, Titan, Hyperion, Iapetas, Phoeby (all Greek names)
Even with a small telescope, you can easily see Saturn and it's rings. With a medium to large sized scope, you can see that rings are not just one ring, but there is at least one division in them.
Saturn's Rings
Image courtesy of:
Voyager mission Spokes in Saturn's Rings Among the many pictures the Voyager missions sent back from Saturn was this one showing what appear to be "spokes" in the giant planet's rings. What causes these spokes? How are they formed and why do they seem to appear and disappear? The answer is probably that the gravitational forces of Saturn and its moons are acting together to form the complex patterns that we see in the giant planet's rings. Whatever is causing the rings of Saturn to change the way they do, it is a very beautiful sight to see. Hopefully the Cassini mission will help answer this question and many others we have about this beautiful planet.
The Rings Disappear!
Image courtesy of: Hubble Space Telescope Saturn's Disappearing Rings Although Saturn's rings are very wide, over 150,000 miles in diameter, they are very thin, averaging only a few hundred yards thick. The rings are not solid, but are made up of countless numbers of ice chunks and rocks usually smaller than the average pickup truck. The thinness of Saturn's rings means that every fifteen years, we get a chance to see them almost disappear entirely, as the Hubble Space Telescope image at right, taken in the fall of 1995, shows. You can see Saturn's moon Titan at the left in the top photograph. The dark spot that appears below the rings in the same picture is the shadow of Titan on the planet. It's hard for us to imagine how something so large could seem to disappear entirely and then reappear and grow in size as time goes by. It's just another example of the wonders of the universe.
