The Satellites
In only twelve hours, Saturn’s satellites grew from names in ancient mythology into dazzling worlds with personae of their own. As Voyager 1 sailed through the Saturn system, it returned photographs of Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, and Rhea—all part of a class of intermediate-sized icy bodies heretofore unstudied by planetary spacecraft. All but Enceladus show heavily cratered surfaces, evidence of aeons of meteorite bombardment. Enceladus hints at internal processes, as yet unidentified, which may have erased from its surface the evidence of early bombardment—but we must await Voyager 2’s arrival next August to better understand this body.
11/9/80 4.5 million km (2.8 million mi)
The surface of giant Titan, now dethroned from its seat as the solar system’s largest satellite (Jupiter’s Ganymede is larger), remains an enigma, shrouded beneath thick layers of haze.
11/12/80 22,000 km (14,000 mi)
Tiny moons—three new ones and three confirmed from previous sightings—may tell us much about ring dynamics since gravitational forces from satellites probably influence the ring structure. Two of these tiny moons are on the verge of collision in the same orbit, while several others appear to bound the A- and F-Rings. Iapetus, whose two hemispheres differ dramatically in brightness, was photographed in its orbit, almost 3.6 million kilometers (2.2 million miles) from the planet.
11/12/80 425,000 km (264,000 mi)