Key facts
- Category
- Moons
- Object class
- Large icy moon
- Composition
- Water ice and rock
- Temperature
- ~99 K surface
Rhea
1,528 kmdiameter
Visual creditCassini 2005 / NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute / Public domainSource: Wikimedia Commons
Details
Rhea is Saturn's second-largest moon, a cold icy body with an old, heavily cratered surface. Cassini also detected an extremely thin oxygen and carbon dioxide exosphere around it.
Rhea’s densely cratered ice preserves an old surface, including bright fracture walls where darker material has fallen away. Cassini also sampled an extremely tenuous exosphere of oxygen and carbon dioxide. The oxygen can be produced when energetic particles from Saturn’s magnetosphere split molecules in surface ice; the carbon-dioxide source is less certain.
Links
- Universe journey
- Asteroid belt & Jupiter
- Wikipedia
- Rhea on Wikipedia
Size neighbors
Objects near Rhea on the scale
Sources
References for Rhea
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.
- Rhea — Wikipedia
- Visual reference: Wikimedia Commons (Cassini 2005 / NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute, Public domain)
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About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides explain selected parts of that range, while focused views filter the objects by subject.