Daphnis
Moon· orbits Saturn
Daphnis is a moon orbiting Saturn.
Open in 3D viewSee Daphnis in the live, interactive 3D map
Key facts
Radius
3.8 km
Orbit around Saturn
14.3 hours
0.59 Earth days
Science
Physical
- Radius
- 3.8 km
- Resolved shape from Cassini imaging — resolved imaging
Orbit around Saturn
- Distance from Saturn
- 136,500 km
- From JPL orbital elements
- Orbital period
- 14.26 hours
- From JPL orbital elements
- Eccentricity
- 0
- From JPL orbital elements
- Inclination to Saturn's Laplace plane
- 0.00 °
- From JPL orbital elements · The Laplace plane is the one a moon's orbit precesses about: close in it is the planet's equatorial plane, the plane of the rings, and further out it tilts toward the planet's own orbit.
Radiation & temperature
- Insolation
- 0.0112 S⊕ · 1% of the sunlight Earth receives
- Computed from the distance to the Sun (inverse-square; Earth's sunlight = 1), before any atmosphere.
Discovery & history
- Discovered
- May 6, 2005
- By
- Cassini Imaging Science Team
- Name
- Daphnis, a shepherd of Greek myth who was taught to play the pipes by the god Pan — for whom the next gap-keeping moon inward is named.
Daphnis was found in Cassini images taken on 1 May 2005 and announced five days later, at first as S/2005 S 1. It orbits inside the Keeler Gap, a 42-kilometre lane near the outer edge of the A ring that the moon itself keeps open, and its gravity pulls the gap's edges into waves — horizontally, and vertically out of the ring plane, which Cassini caught casting shadows around Saturn's 2009 equinox. The closest pictures, from a ring-grazing pass on 16 January 2017, show a narrow ridge around its equator and a second one further north, with a smooth mantle of ring material over the surface.
Images
Images from open archives · credit shown per image