Word: enceladus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Astronomy is also turning to the classics for discoveries made during the unmanned Voyager spacecrafts' flybys of Saturn's moons. Craters on Mimas, for example, will be named for characters from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur; the recently photographed fissures on Enceladus, for those from the Arabian Nights; features on Tethys, for those from Homer's Odyssey. Yet even so seemingly innocuous a task can bog down in politics. The Soviets like to name newly discovered asteroids after revolutionary heroes. Last summer U.S. and West European astronomers countered by naming one after...
...most intriguing moon is Enceladus, which seems to be caught in a kind of gravitational tug-of-war. Pulled by nearby moons, its interior heats up, causing surface fissures and creating glacier-like ice flows that obliterate craters made earlier in its turbulent history...
...stares out like the ominous billboard eye in The Great Gatsby. Had the object that caused the crater been much larger, its impact might have shattered Mimas. Its other side is heavily pockmarked with small craters, indicating that it is a relatively old celestial body. Yet Mimas' companion Enceladus displays a less dramatic topography. Scientists speculate that some mysterious heat source, perhaps created by gravitational stresses, has softened its icy surface and smoothed out cracks and craters...