Key facts
- Scale fact
- 1,066 kmmean diameter
- Composition
- Mostly water ice with a small amount of rock
- Temperature
- ~86 K mean surface
Tethys
1,066 kmmean diameter
Visual creditCassini 2009 / NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI / Gordan Ugarkovic / Public domainSource: Wikimedia Commons
Details
Tethys is a bright icy moon of Saturn, marked by the huge Odysseus crater and a great valley system called Ithaca Chasma. Its low density and high reflectivity point to a body made mostly of water ice.
Odysseus crater spans roughly 450 kilometers, more than two fifths of Tethys’s diameter, while Ithaca Chasma extends about 2,000 kilometers across the icy surface. The crater and canyon system record separate large-scale stresses; whether the impact helped open the chasma is still debated.
Links
- Universe journey
- Asteroid belt & Jupiter
- Wikipedia
- Tethys on Wikipedia
Size neighbors
Objects near Tethys on the scale
Sources
References for Tethys
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.
- Tethys — Wikipedia
- Visual reference: Wikimedia Commons (Cassini 2009 / NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI / Gordan Ugarkovic, 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.