Dunyazad is a large crater on Saturn's moon

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 refle ...

first discovered by the ''

Voyager 2 ''Voyager 2'' is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets and interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. As a part of the Voyager program, it was launched 16 days before its twin, '' Voyager 1'', o ...

'' spacecraft. It is named after Dunyazad, the sister of

Scheherazade Scheherazade () is a major female character and the storyteller in the frame narrative of the Middle Eastern collection of tales known as the '' One Thousand and One Nights''. Name According to modern scholarship, the name ''Scheherazade'' de ...

in ''

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...

''. Dunyazad is located at and is approximately 31 kilometers across, making it one of the largest craters on Enceladus. It is the southernmost crater of a prominent crater triplet on Enceladus' anti-Saturnian hemisphere (there is no evidence that the impacts are related or were formed from break-up of a single body, like Shoemaker-Levy 9). The craters to its north are Shahrazad, and Al-Haddar. ''Voyager 2'' discovery images of this crater revealed an up-domed floor at Dunyazad, suggesting that the crater had been modified by viscous relaxation. Higher resolution views of Dunyazad taken by the ''Cassini'' Spacecraft during a close flyby on March 9, 2005 reveal not only an up-domed floor, but numerous tectonic fractures as well, particularly within the dome and northeastern crater rim.

References

Impact craters on Enceladus {{Enceladus