Tethys | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tethys moon of Saturn | Automatic translation | Updated June 01, 2013 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tethys In the Greek mythology, Tethys is one of the essential divinities of the Hellenic theologies. She personifies the "feminine" fertility of the sea. Born of the courtship of Ouranos and Gaia, she is the youngest of Titanides. She married Ocean, one of her brothers, of whom she had one very children's large number, more than three thousand, which are all the rivers of the world. Tethys raised Hera, whom confided her Rhea (too a titanide), during the fight of Zeus against Cronos. As a mark of gratitude, Hera succeeded in reconciler Tethys and Ocean, which had fallen out. The house of Tethys is generally placed in the extreme West, beyond the country of Hesperidia, in the region where, every evening, the sun ends its running. is an ice-cold body, similar to Dione and Rhea. Its density indicates that it mainly consists of ice. The surface of Tethys is covered with craters and counts numerous cracks in the ice. There are two types of ground on Tethys: the one consists of regions strongly cratered; other one consists of a belt of dark color and little cratered which crosses the moon throughout. The weak number of craters on this region indicates that Tethys certainly had formerly an internal activity, causing a partial ascent of the oldest ground. In orbit synchronous around Saturn, Tethys always presents the same hemisphere to its planet, quite as the Moon in the Earth and of numerous satellites with regard to their planet mother. It is necessary to Tethys a little less than 2 days to make the tour of Saturn. Tethys is accompanied on his orbit by two other satellites of Saturn: Telesto early of 60° and Calypso late of 60° what creates a point of "Lagrange" A point of Lagrange (noted Li), or of libration, is a position of the space where the fields of gravity of two bodies in orbit the one around the other one, and around the substantial masses, harmonize so as to supply a point of balance to the third body of unimportant mass, such as the relative positions of three bodies are fixed.. |
Image: Conversion Kelvin The Kelvin is a measure absolved from the temperature which was introduced thanks to the third principle of the thermodynamics. The temperature of 0 K is equal in-273,15°C and corresponds to the absolute zero. In degrees Celsius: °C = K - 273,15 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Face hidden from Tethys | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Since the beginning of its mission in the system of Saturn, the space probe Cassini had repeatedly the occasion to observe the procession of the moons which revolve around the huge planet. Tethys is dominated by an enormous crater of impact named Odyssey, 400 km in diameters of which represent near 2/5 of Tethys. | Other big very visible craters here are Penelope (to the left of the center) and Melanthius (under the center). Image: The face was hidden from Tethys in natural colors, this image was taken by the probe Cassini on December 31st, 2006 at a distance about 414000 kilometers of Tethys. The resolution is 2 kilometers by pixel. Source: NASA |