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Saturnian Moon Identification, How to tell one moon from another?
David
post Oct 6 2005, 02:57 PM
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Most of Saturn's nine largest moons have some characteristic that distinguishes them from the others, by which I can more or less instantly recognize them when I see their images:
Titan is big, orange, and smoggy
Iapetus is pied black and white, with an immense crater, irregular shape, and that wacky equatorial ridge (almost too many weirdnesses for one moon!)
Enceladus is small, icy, and smooth like a spherical hockey rink, with those warm antarctic catscratches
Mimas is small, bumpy, egg-round, with a really big crater
Hyperion is irregular and pocked full of medium-sized black-bottomed holes
Phoebe is potato-shaped with a less dense pocking of conical craters, plus a few larger ones

But the three I still have a lot of trouble distinguishing are Rhea, Dione, and Tethys. I know Rhea is considerably larger, but the scale difference isn't enough to make it a lot less lumpy than the other two, so that doesn't help much. What distinguishing marks should I look for to be able to easily differentiate these three moons?
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Bjorn Jonsson
post Oct 6 2005, 04:58 PM
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Tethys: Ithaca Chasma and the huge Odysseus crater. Apart from this, lots of craters.

Dione: Its albedo varies a lot more than Tethys'. Bright features with a 'wispy' appearance in long-range images. No really big craters or 'canyons' as in Tethys' case.

Rhea: Fairly uniform albedo, no really big craters or canyons and its 'wispy' features are far less prominent than Dione's. *Lots* of craters.
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Jyril
post Oct 6 2005, 05:23 PM
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Rhea is hardest to identify, since it lacks prominent special features. However, its craters are somewhat angular and less deep compared to Tethys or Dione so close-ups make identification easier.

Tethys and Dione are easy to identify when you see their special features. Dione is also darkest of the three, so it is easier to distinguish from others if it is in same image with another moon.


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The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
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volcanopele
post Oct 6 2005, 05:32 PM
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Tethys: smaller than Rhea, rugged terrain, Odysseus and Ithaca Chasma prominent, look for Penelope-Phemius-Polyphemus-Ajax grouping of craters
Dione: Prominent wispy terrain on dark background, smoother topography than Tethys elsewhere, south polar impact basin
Rhea: Two large impact basins in anti-Saturnian hemisphere (Tirawa and ... S. Tirawa), ray crater, rugged like Tethys but bigger, wispy terrain with lighter background than Dione's and with fewer "branching arms", Two impact basin south and east of wispy terrain (Izanagi)


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ljk4-1
post Nov 11 2005, 02:55 PM
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That Cassini probe sure knows a photo op when it sees one:

http://www.universetoday.com/am/uploads/20...emoons-full.jpg

As wonderful as the Voyagers were, Cassini is proof positive that a couple of flybys just are not enough.


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"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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ljk4-1
post Jan 25 2006, 05:22 PM
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MOONS IN PERSPECTIVE
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Two of Saturn's battered, icy companions hover here in this Cassini image,
above the planet's ringplane. To get a sense of the three-dimensional
nature of the scene, note that the wide band of visible rings is in
between the two moons in this view. Mimas is outside the far side of the
rings. Dione is outside the rings and closest to Cassini.

http://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/060123moons.html


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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ljk4-1
post Jan 30 2006, 06:39 PM
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Three moons, quite artistic/epic:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...8/N00049538.jpg


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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