Solar Eclipses On Saturn
Solar eclipses on Saturn occur when the natural satellites of Saturn pass in front of the Sun as seen from Saturn. These eclipses happen fairly often. For example, some of Saturn's moons can have a solar eclipse every day depending on the saturnian season. For bodies which appear smaller in angular diameter than the Sun, the proper, more general term would be a transit and for those that are larger than the apparent size of the Sun, the proper term would be an occultation. Seven of Saturn's satellites – Janus, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Rhea, Dione and Titan – are large enough and near enough to eclipse or occult the Sun, or in other words to cast an umbra on Saturn. Most of the more distant satellites, besides being tiny, have orbits that are strongly inclined to the plane of Saturn's orbit, and would rarely be seen to transit. At this distance, the sun covers only about 3 arcminutes in the sky of Saturn. In comparison, the seven major moons of Saturn have angular di ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Quadruple Saturn Moon Transit
{{disambiguation ...
Quadruple may refer to: * 4-tuple, an ordered list of elements, with four elements * Quad (figure skating), a figure skating jump * Quadruple (computing), a term used as alternative for nibble in some contexts * Quadruple-precision floating-point format in computing * Multiple birth with four offspring * A term for winning four football trophies in a single season See also * 4 (other) * Quadruple Alliance (other), any of a number of military alliances * Quadrupel, a strong beer * Quadripole * Quadrupole A quadrupole or quadrapole is one of a sequence of configurations of things like electric charge or current, or gravitational mass that can exist in ideal form, but it is usually just part of a multipole expansion of a more complex structure refl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tethys (moon)
Tethys (), or Saturn III, is a mid-sized moon of Saturn about across. It was discovered by G. D. Cassini in 1684 and is named after the titan Tethys of Greek mythology. Tethys has a low density of 0.98 g/cm3, the lowest of all the major moons in the Solar System, indicating that it is made of water ice with just a small fraction of rock. This is confirmed by the spectroscopy of its surface, which identified water ice as the dominant surface material. A small amount of an unidentified dark material is present as well. The surface of Tethys is very bright, being the second-brightest of the moons of Saturn after Enceladus, and neutral in color. Tethys is heavily cratered and cut by a number of large faults/graben. The largest impact crater, Odysseus, is about 400 km in diameter, whereas the largest graben, Ithaca Chasma, is about 100 km wide and more than 2000 km long. These two largest surface features may be related. A small part of the surface is covered ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Jupiter is the List of brightest natural objects in the sky, third brightest natural object in the Earth's night sky after the Moon and Venus, and it has been observed since Pre-history, prehistoric times. It was named after the Jupiter (mythology), Roman god Jupiter, the king of the gods. Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen, but helium constitutes one-quarter of its mass and one-tenth of its volume. It probably has a rocky core of heavier elements, but, like the other giant planets in the Solar System, it lacks a well-defined solid surface. The ongoing contraction of Jupiter's interior generates more heat than it receives from the Sun. Because of its rapid rotation, the planet' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Iapetus (moon)
Iapetus () is a moon of Saturn. It is the 24th of Saturn’s 83 known moons. With an estimated diameter of 1,469 km, it is the third-largest moon of Saturn and the eleventh-largest in the Solar System. Named after the Titan Iapetus, the moon was discovered in 1671 by Giovanni Domenico Cassini. A relatively low-density body made up mostly of ice, Iapetus is home to several distinctive and unusual features, such as a striking difference in coloration between its leading hemisphere, which is dark, and its trailing hemisphere, which is bright, as well as a massive equatorial ridge running three-quarters of the way around the moon. History Discovery Iapetus was discovered by Giovanni Domenico Cassini, an Italian-born French astronomer, in October 1671. He had discovered it on the western side of Saturn and tried viewing it on the eastern side some months later, but was unsuccessful. This was also the case the following year, when he was again able to observe it on the western ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Arcminutes
A minute of arc, arcminute (arcmin), arc minute, or minute arc, denoted by the symbol , is a unit of angular measurement equal to of one degree. Since one degree is of a turn (or complete rotation), one minute of arc is of a turn. The nautical mile (nmi) was originally defined as the arc length of a minute of latitude on a spherical Earth, so the actual Earth circumference is very near . A minute of arc is of a radian. A second of arc, arcsecond (arcsec), or arc second, denoted by the symbol , is of an arcminute, of a degree, of a turn, and (about ) of a radian. These units originated in Babylonian astronomy as sexagesimal subdivisions of the degree; they are used in fields that involve very small angles, such as astronomy, optometry, ophthalmology, optics, navigation, land surveying, and marksmanship. To express even smaller angles, standard SI prefixes can be employed; the milliarcsecond (mas) and microarcsecond (μas), for instance, are commonly used in astron ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Umbra
The umbra, penumbra and antumbra are three distinct parts of a shadow, created by any light source after impinging on an opaque object. Assuming no diffraction, for a collimated beam (such as a point source) of light, only the umbra is cast. These names are most often used for the shadows cast by celestial bodies, though they are sometimes used to describe levels, such as in sunspots. Umbra The umbra (Latin for "shadow") is the innermost and darkest part of a shadow, where the light source is completely blocked by the occluding body. An observer within the umbra experiences a total eclipse. The umbra of a round body occluding a round light source forms a right circular cone. When viewed from the cone's apex, the two bodies appear the same size. The distance from the Moon to the apex of its umbra is roughly equal to that between the Moon and Earth: . Since Earth's diameter is 3.7 times the Moon's, its umbra extends correspondingly farther: roughly . Penumbra The pe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Titan (moon)
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second-largest natural satellite in the Solar System. It is the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere, and is the only known object in space other than Earth on which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found. Titan is one of the seven gravitationally rounded moons in orbit around Saturn, and the second most distant from Saturn of those seven. Frequently described as a planet-like moon, Titan is 50% larger (in diameter) than Earth's Moon and 80% more massive. It is the second-largest moon in the Solar System after Jupiter's moon Ganymede, and is larger than the planet Mercury, but only 40% as massive. Discovered in 1655 by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, Titan was the first known moon of Saturn, and the sixth known planetary satellite (after Earth's moon and the four Galilean moons of Jupiter). Titan orbits Saturn at 20 Saturn radii. From Titan's surface, Saturn subtends an arc of 5.09 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dione (moon)
Dione () is a moon of Saturn. It was discovered by Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1684. It is named after the Titaness Dione of Greek mythology. It is also designated Saturn IV. Name Giovanni Domenico Cassini named the four moons he discovered ( Tethys, Dione, Rhea and Iapetus) ''Sidera Lodoicea'' ("the stars of Louis") to honor king Louis XIV. Cassini found Dione in 1684 using a large aerial telescope he set up on the grounds of the Paris Observatory. The satellites of Saturn were not named until 1847, when William Herschel's son John Herschel published ''Results of Astronomical Observations made at the Cape of Good Hope,'' suggesting that the names of the Titans (sisters and brothers of Cronus) be used. Orbit Dione orbits Saturn with a semimajor axis about 2% less than that of the Moon. However, reflecting Saturn's greater mass (95 times that of Earth), Dione's orbital period is one tenth that of the Moon. Dione is currently in a 1:2 mean-motion or ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rhea (moon)
Rhea () is the second-largest moon of Saturn and the ninth-largest moon in the Solar System. It is the smallest body in the Solar System for which precise measurements have confirmed a shape consistent with hydrostatic equilibrium. It was discovered in 1672 by Giovanni Domenico Cassini. Discovery Rhea was discovered by Giovanni Domenico Cassini on 23 December 1672. It was the second moon of Saturn that Cassini discovered, and the third moon discovered around Saturn overall. Name Rhea is named after the Titan Rhea of Greek mythology, the "mother of the gods" and wife of Kronos, the Greek counterpart of the god Saturn. It is also designated Saturn V (being the fifth major moon going outward from the planet, after Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, and Dione). Cassini named the four moons he discovered (Tethys, Dione, Rhea, and Iapetus) ''Sidera Lodoicea'' (the stars of Louis) to honor King Louis XIV. Astronomers fell into the habit of referring to them and Titan as '' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Enceladus
Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn (19th largest in the Solar System). It is about in diameter, about a tenth of that of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Enceladus is mostly covered by fresh, clean ice, making it one of the most reflective bodies of the Solar System. Consequently, its surface temperature at noon only reaches , far colder than a light-absorbing body would be. Despite its small size, Enceladus has a wide range of surface features, ranging from old, heavily cratered regions to young, tectonically deformed terrain. Enceladus was discovered on August 28, 1789, by William Herschel, but little was known about it until the two Voyager spacecraft, ''Voyager 1'' and ''Voyager 2'', flew by Saturn in 1980 and 1981. In 2005, the spacecraft '' Cassini'' started multiple close flybys of Enceladus, revealing its surface and environment in greater detail. In particular, ''Cassini'' discovered water-rich plumes venting from the south polar region. Cryovolc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Natural Satellite
A natural satellite is, in the most common usage, an astronomical body that orbits a planet, dwarf planet, or small Solar System body (or sometimes another natural satellite). Natural satellites are often colloquially referred to as ''moons'', a derivation from the Moon of Earth. In the Solar System, there are six planetary satellite systems containing 209 known natural satellites altogether. Seven objects commonly considered dwarf planets by astronomers are also known to have natural satellites: , Pluto, Haumea, , Makemake, , and Eris. , there are 442 other minor planets known to have natural satellites. A planet usually has at least around 10,000 times the mass of any natural satellites that orbit it, with a correspondingly much larger diameter. The Earth–Moon system is a unique exception in the Solar System; at 3,474 kilometres (2,158 miles) across, the Moon is 0.273 times the diameter of Earth and about of its mass. The next largest ratios are the Neptune–Tr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mimas (moon)
Mimas , also designated Saturn I, is a moon of Saturn discovered in 1789 by William Herschel. It is named after Mimas, a son of Gaia in Greek mythology. With a diameter of , it is the smallest astronomical body that is known to still be rounded in shape because of self-gravitation. However, Mimas is not actually in hydrostatic equilibrium for its current rotation. Discovery Mimas was discovered by the astronomer William Herschel on 17 September 1789. He recorded his discovery as follows: "I continued my observations constantly, whenever the weather would permit; and the great light of the forty-feet speculum was now of so much use, that I also, on the 17th of September, detected the seventh satellite, when it was at its greatest preceding elongation." The 40-foot telescope was a metal mirror reflecting telescope built by Herschel, with a aperture. The 40 feet refers to the length of the focus, not the aperture diameter as more common with modern telescopes. Name Mima ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |