Your Guide to Saturn

Meet Saturn's Moons

Titan

Larger than Mercury, Titan has an orange, hazy atmosphere that was probably similar to Earth’s before life arose here around 3.5 billion years ago. Complex, organic molecules—one of the building blocks for life as we know it—form Titan’s atmosphere and rain from the skies. By studying Titan, we can learn the possible starting ingredients for life on Earth and elsewhere.

The surface is strikingly similar to Earth, with some key differences: Titan has mountains and dunes made of mostly ice rather than rock, and rivers, lakes and seas filled with methane and ethane instead of liquid water. A liquid-water ocean probably exists beneath the surface, though we don’t know if the chemical mix is conducive to life, or if there’s an energy source like the hydrothermal vents in Earth’s oceans.

Enceladus

At just 500 kilometers (310 miles) wide, Enceladus could fit comfortably inside the U.S. state of Arizona. But this moon has a big secret under its icy crust: a saltwater ocean, which leaks into space via geysers on the surface to form one of Saturn’s outer rings. We know the ocean contains complex organic materials. Could it also contain life?

Mimas

Mimas boasts a massive crater that makes it eerily similar to the Death Star from Star Wars. It too may have a subsurface ocean, though material from the ocean does not appear to leak up to the surface.

The photogenic oddballs

Some of Saturn’s smaller moons are among the most photogenic in our solar system. Dione and Rhea are cratered snowball worlds with rocky cores. Hyperion looks like a giant sponge or coral reef. Iapetus is two-faced, with an icy half and a dark half coated with material coming from the comet-like moon Phoebe. And then there’s Pan, a moon whose gravity has grabbed enough material from Saturn’s rings to make it look like a flying saucer!

from The Planetary Society Articles https://ift.tt/39AM3Sv
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