Atlas saturn moon8/19/2023 ![]() ![]() Atlas was so strong that he supported the weight of the Universe on his shoulders. Atlas was ordered by Zeus to uphold the vault of the sky after the defeat of the Titans. Originally designated S/1980 S28, this moon is named after Atlas, a Titan, and a son of Iapetus. But as many new moons were discovered, scientists began selecting names from more mythologies including Gallic, Inuit, and Norse stories. Moons of Saturn were originally named for Greco-Roman Titans and descendants of the Titans. It orbits 85,544 miles (137,670 km) away from, taking 14.4 hours to complete its trip around the planet. The images of Pan were taken on March 7, 2017, at a distance of 16,000 miles (26,000 kilometers) and a phase angle of 21 degrees. ![]() The small, pointy moon has a mean radius of 9.4 miles (15.1 km). The images of Atlas were acquired on April 12, 2017, at a distance of 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) and at a sun-moon-spacecraft angle (or phase angle) of 37 degrees. Cassini images revealed in 2004 that a temporary faint ring of material with the orbit of Atlas. ![]() Like Pan, Atlas has a distinctive flying saucer shape created by a prominent equatorial ridge not seen on the other small moons of Saturn. OverviewĪtlas is an inner moon of Saturn, orbiting around the outer edge of Saturn's A Ring. Terrile and the Voyager 1 team from photographs taken during its encounter with Saturn. “And that energy can create under-ice oceans, maybe even habitable zones.Atlas was discovered in 1980 by R. “The same gravity that causes all these weird phenomena that we’re seeing on these little moons causes energy to be pumped into some of the larger ones,” says Terrile. Understanding Pan and Atlas may be key to understanding gravity’s role in all of Saturn’s moons. “It may also be some kind of gravitational tidal effect from being near all this ring material,” says Terrile. The dominant theory for how the ridges form is that because the moons’ diameters are so much larger than the ring’s thickness, they gather material along their equators as they plow through stray ring particles. The two moons are approximately the same size, but Pan is embedded within a ring, and Atlas is along the outer edge. “What is especially interesting is the extent to which the soft material seems to bury and mute any crisp-looking topographic features even on the central ‘core’ structure,” says Paul Helfenstein at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who helped plan the flyby.Īnother moon, Pan, also has an equatorial ridge, but another recent flyby showed its ridge is rough with tension cracks and craters. “It looks like it’s covered in some kind of fluffy material.” “It looks more subdued than I expected,” Terrile says. During the final stages of the Cassini mission, the spacecraft made a series of close observations of Saturns rings. We already knew Atlas has a UFO-like ridge around its equator, but surprisingly, the new images show that ridge is smooth. “This is a really interesting kind of dynamical dance that these moons do with the ring particles.” But instead, the ring’s shape is held by two other moons, Janus and Epimetheus. ![]() “At the time, we thought the satellite was holding out the edge of the A ring,” Terrile says. But Atlas appears to be a shepherd moon that isn’t responsible for shepherding ring particles. Some of Saturn’s moons, called shepherd moons, use their gravity to keep the planet’s famous rings in check. ![]()
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