Friday, January 2, 2026

Clone moons of Saturn..

 

What you're seeing are three different moons of Saturn 🪐, named Tethys, Dione and Rhea.

It's very hard to distinguish between them. But that isn't the only reason we can consider them to be clones.

Tethys and Dione are very similar in size. A difference of just 30 km in their radii. Rhea is quite larger, though.

They're all mostly made of water ice 🧊, and heavily cratered, which means they’ve not changed since billions of years— old scars of impacts are still there.

Here are enhanced colour images of their surfaces:

It's obvious that all of them have one side much darker than the other.

There's an interesting reason behind it.

The three moons orbit in Saturn’s E ring, a faint ring of ice, created by another tiny moon Enceladus, whose geysers blast off water into space.

Being tidally locked to Saturn (keeping the same face towards their planet), their one side continuously faces the ring while other is shielded.

This creates a thin layer of ice on half of the moon, making it brighter than the other.

Here's a stunning image taken by Cassini spacecraft. Rhea passes behind Dione. They blend seamlessly into a snowman.