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Moon of Saturn

Enceladus

Open in OuranosCompare its size

Geysers of salty water from its south pole feed Saturn's E ring.

At Saturn.

Measured

Mean radius
252 km
From the Earth today
8.7 AU (1.3 billion km)
Goes round once every
1.37 days

How far, from the Earth

8.7 AU. To cross it:

  • Light1 hour 12 minutes
  • Voyager 1's speed2.44 years
  • Driving at 100 km/h1,480 years

Voyager 1 at the speed it moved outward over the year to 2026-10-25 (JPL Horizons). Driving: nonstop, never refuelling.

Facts

  • Within 2° of where JPL Horizons has it round its planet, 2024-2031. Further from those years it is less sure.
  • Its map is turned by the rule for a moon that keeps one face to its planet: longitude 0 towards the planet, on the planet's pole. Which way it really faces can differ by a few degrees, and the published rotation formulas differ from this by as much (Titan 5° now and 16° by 2050, Enceladus 6°).

Where this comes from

  • Planets, Pluto, the Moon and Jupiter's big moons: astronomy-engine (Don Cross, MIT). Other moons: JPL Planetary Satellite Mean Elements. Ceres, Eris, Haumea, Makemake: JPL Small-Body Database. NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Every catalogue Ouranos draws is credited on the credits page.