Methone

Updated

Details

Methone is a tiny, egg-shaped moon of Saturn with an unusually smooth surface, likely mantled in mobile, low-density icy material. It orbits between Mimas and Enceladus and helps supply the faint Methone Ring Arc with dust knocked loose by impacts.

1.70km
Visual creditNASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute / Public domainSource: Wikimedia Commons

Key facts

Category
Moons
Object class
Small inner moon
Composition
Low-density water ice and regolith
Scale fact
3.88 kmmaximum extent
Mass
~3.9 billion tonnes
Host
Saturn

Scale context

Where Methone sits on the full axis

By size on the journey, Methone sits between 103P/Hartley 2 and 4179 Toutatis. The band below compares Methone with nearby Small inner moon objects so the size jump stays easy to read.

Shared physical scale
333km
Methone3.88 km
Pandora103 km
Puck162 km
Proteus436 km

Together, these objects make the size change around Methone easy to compare at a glance.

Sources

References for Methone

Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, please let us know.

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