{"id":220780,"date":"2014-08-11T05:31:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T09:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"f00e7e63308a91dabaf0194ebed63f9d"},"modified":"2014-08-11T05:31:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T09:31:00","slug":"saturns-moon-rhea-epimetheus-transiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=220780","title":{"rendered":"Saturn’s moon Rhea, Epimetheus transiting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\nSaturn has a great many more moons than our planet \u2013 a whopping 62. A single moon, Titan, accounts for an overwhelming 96% of all the material orbit the planet, with a group of six other smaller moons dominating the rest. The other 55 small satellites whizzing around Saturn make up the tiny remainder along with the gas giant\u2019s famous rings.\n<\/p>\n

\nOne of the subjects of this Cassini image, Rhea, belongs to that group of six. Set against a backdrop showing Saturn and its intricate system of icy rings, Rhea dominates the scene and dwarfs its tiny companion, one of the 55 small satellites known as Epimetheus. \n<\/p>\n

\nAlthough they appear to be close to one another, this is a trick of perspective \u2013 this view was obtained when Cassini was some 1.2 million km from Rhea, and 1.6 million km from Epimetheus, meaning the moons themselves had a hefty separation of 400 000 km.\n<\/p>\n

\nHowever, even if they were nearer to each other, Rhea would still loom large over Epimetheus: at 1528 km across and just under half the size of our own Moon, Rhea is well over 10 times the size of Epimetheus, which is a modest 113 km across.\n<\/p>\n

\nAs is traditional for the earliest discovered moons of Saturn, both are named after figures from Greek mythology: the Titan Rhea (\u201cmother of the gods\u201d) and Prometheus\u2019 brother Epimetheus (\u201cafter thinker\u201d or \u201chindsight\u201d). \n<\/p>\n

\nThis image was taken by Cassini\u2019s narrow-angle camera on 24 March 2010, and processed by amateur astronomer Gordan Ugarkovi\u0107<\/a>. A monochrome version was previously released by NASA as PIA12638: Big and Small Before Rings.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\nSaturn has a great many more moons than our planet \u2013 a whopping 62. A single moon, Titan, accounts for an overwhelming 96% of all the material orbit the planet, with a group of six other smaller moons dominating the rest. The other 55 small satellites whizzing around Saturn make up the tiny remainder along with the gas giant\u2019s famous rings.\n<\/p>\n

\nOne of the subjects of this Cassini image, Rhea, belongs to that group of six. Set against a backdrop showing Saturn and its intricate system of icy rings, Rhea dominates the scene and dwarfs its tiny companion, one of the 55 small satellites known as Epimetheus. \n<\/p>\n

\nAlthough they appear to be close to one another, this is a trick of perspective \u2013 this view was obtained when Cassini was some 1.2 million km from Rhea, and 1.6 million km from Epimetheus, meaning the moons themselves had a hefty separation of 400 000 km.\n<\/p>\n

\nHowever, even if they were nearer to each other, Rhea would still loom large over Epimetheus: at 1528 km across and just under half the size of our own Moon, Rhea is well over 10 times the size of Epimetheus, which is a modest 113 km across.\n<\/p>\n

\nAs is traditional for the earliest discovered moons of Saturn, both are named after figures from Greek mythology: the Titan Rhea (\u201cmother of the gods\u201d) and Prometheus\u2019 brother Epimetheus (\u201cafter thinker\u201d or \u201chindsight\u201d). \n<\/p>\n

\nThis image was taken by Cassini\u2019s narrow-angle camera on 24 March 2010, and processed by amateur astronomer Gordan Ugarkovi\u0107<\/a>. A monochrome version was previously released by NASA as PIA12638: Big and Small Before Rings.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=220780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=220780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=220780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=220780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}