May 4, 2005

One of Saturn's moons is not like the others

Astronomers have confirmed what they have suspected about Saturn's moon Phoebe: the potato-like moon didn't come from Saturn. They new that the direction and tilt of Phoebe's orbit is different from the other moons of Saturn, and data from the Cassini-Huygens probe show more differences. For instance, Pheobe has much less ice and much more rock than the other moons. It is most likely that Pheobe came to Saturn from the Kuiper belt, a ring od icy rocks past Neptune. Cassini data also show that some of the minerals and organic molecules on Phoebe's surface are typical of objects in the Kuiper belt. Link.

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