Curiosity Shop of Saturn's Moons

This video is modeled in the classic tradition of P.T. Barnum, offering a collection of oddities for your viewing pleasure. So enter the Curiosity Shop for a compilation of facts and beautiful moon images taken by the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn since 2004, set to Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16 II. Adagio. This video is produced in honor of the recent Cassini Spacecraft Mission extension through September 2017.

Take a gander at Gigantic Titan to your left. Feel free to ogle bright Enceladus to your right, reflecting close to 100 percent of the light that hits its surface. Don't be afraid to eyeball Mimas and her craters. That's what she's there for! Saturn has the second most moons of planets in the solar system. Second, only to Jupiter.

September 27th, 2010 marked the end of the Cassini Equinox Mission, which was over the last 2 years, and the beginning of the Cassini Solstice Mission. The extension to takes the spacecraft to September 2017, a couple months past Saturn's Northern summer solstice in May 2017. Cassini has done a great deal to extend our knowledge of Saturn and it's moons as well as delivered some of the most gorgeous photos taken in the Solar System; Photos of Saturn, Saturn's rings and Saturn's moons. This video pictures just a few of the many photos.

Fact Sheet:

Mimas
Diameter: averages 396 km
Orbital Radius: 185,520 km
Orbital Period: 22 hours and 37 minutes
Mass: 37,500,000,000 megatonnes

Mimas and Rhea are widely considered the most heavily cratered bodies in the Solar System

Enceladus
Diameter: about 500 km
Orbital Radius: 238,020 kilometers
Orbital Period: 1.37 Days
Mass: 70,000,000,000 megatonnes

It is postulated that Enceladus is heated by a tidal mechanism similar to Jupiter's moon Io and many signs point to a liquid core even though it should've frozen aeons ago.

It is the most reflective object in the solar system.

Tethys
Diameter: 1,066 km
Orbital Radius: 294,660km
Orbital Period: 1.89 earth days
Mass: 627,000,000,000 megatonnes

Odysseus Crater (named for a Greek warrior king in Homer's two great works, The Iliad and The Odyssey) dominates the Tethyan western hemisphere. Odysseus Crater is 400 kilometers in-diameter (almost 250 miles). That diameter is nearly two-fifths of Tethys itself.

Dione
Diameter: 1,123 km
Orbital Radius: 377,400 km
Orbital Period: 2.7 earth days
Mass: 1,100,000,000,000 megatonnes

Cassini showed Dione's bright wisps to be bright canyon ice walls (some of them several hundred meters high), probably caused by subsidence cracking. The walls are bright because darker material falls off them, exposing bright water ice.

Rhea
Diameter: 1,528 km
Average Distance: 527,040 km
Orbital Period: 4.52 Earth days
Mass: 2,310,000,000,000 megatonnes

Titan
Equatorial Radius: 2,575 km
Orbital Distance: 1,221,830 km
Orbital Period: 15.95 Earth days
Mass: 134,550,000,000,000 megatonnes

Recent results from the Cassini mission suggest that hydrogen and acetylene are depleted at the surface of Titan. Both results are still preliminary, but the findings are interesting for astrobiology. A paper published 5 years ago suggested that methane-based (rather than water-based) life -- ie, organisms called methanogens -- on Titan could consume hydrogen, acetylene, and ethane. The measured depletion of these compounds could mean the existence of these life forms on the surface.

Hyperion
Average diameter: 270 km
Mass: 800,000,000 megatonnes
Orbital Distance: 1,481,100 km
Orbital Period: 21.28 Earth days

Hyperion is the largest known irregular (nonspherical) body in the Solar System.

Iapetus
Equatorial Radius: 735.5 km
Orbital Distance: 3,561,300 km
Orbital Period: 79.33 Earth days
Mass: 1,600,000,000,000 megatonnes

The September 2007 Cassini flyby of Iapetus showed that thermal segregation is probably the most responsible for Iapetus having a darker hemisphere. Iapetus has a very slow rotation, longer than 79 days. Such a slow rotation means that the daily temperature cycle is very long, so long that the dark material can absorb heat from the Sun and warm up.

Phoebe
Diameter: 220 km
Orbital Distance: 12,952,000 km
Orbital Period: about 18 months
Mass: 400,000,000 megatonnes

Unlike most major moons orbiting Saturn, Phoebe is very dark and reflects only 6 percent of the sunlight it receives. Its darkness and irregular, retrograde orbit suggest Phoebe is most likely a captured object.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• saturn
• dickens
• curio
• solar
• system
• cassini
• voyager
• nasa
• space
• universe
• astronomy
• spacecraft
• moons
• venus
• mercury
• jupiter
• pluto
• neptune
• enceladus
• titan
• rhea

[LonexX18]

@Adj19888

I love all of them aswell man, if they made a movie about Saturn's Moon I'd even go to the cinema. Space is amazing and space is our future.Keep looking up.

[Froggeh92]

imo Jupiter's moons kick saturn's moons asses anyday of the week! altho saturn is a sexier planet than jupiter... Jupiter knows how to accesorize! its all about the accessories!

[GrimmsBrother]

Hyperion is like a giant space potato traveling around Saturn

[sbergman27]

@Froggeh92 Hey! Saturn has Titan *and* Enceladus. Titan is large and brimming with with organics. Enceladus may be small, but it's spewing samples of its salty oceans out into space. Ripe for the picking. Europa is tantalizing. But how are we ever going to get to the water underneath that ice shell. As for the accessories, are Saturn's rings not enough? Jupiter is a big muscular boring bloke. Nothing more.

[alphatelescopii]

@Froggeh92 almost 90% of which we know NOTHING about.

[MniToster]

Mimas is a real life death star

[KarbineKyle]

AWESOME! I think Cassini-Huygens has been the most successful mission ever! I don't know why NASA won't study Uranus and Neptune. Uranus has 5 Major Moons, (total = 27). Neptune has 1 Major Moon, (total = 13) Triton, which is Geologically Active! It has cryovolcanism written all over it! The only images and information we have of those worlds are from Voyager 2. Why have Uranus & Neptune been left out for so long? Triton is an ODD moon! It has Nitrogen Geysers everywhere! LET'S GO TO THEM NASA!

[EziekielNightwind]

@ku62jo62 Our moon is called Luna, our planet is Earth, our star is Sol.

[davothebum2201]

0:01

[SpaceRip]

@MazeleyFanClub You are partially right. The dark dust was mostly blown off of another moon, but the reason why it has the dark light look is because, one side is heated more by the sun making all of the light material (ice) on that side to sublimate over to the other side, making the dark side even darker and separating the two materials to opposite sides. This is from NASA/JPL

[matatoe]

...who wants go to the mars rigth now??

with a joint ,oohh yeahh...