Phoebe
Phoebe can mean:
- Phoebe, a Titan in Greek mythology
- Phoebe (moon), one of Saturn’s moons
Written for younger readers
Phoebe, in simpler words
This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.
From Wikijunior: Solar System
Phoebe is a moon of Saturn.
Phoebe is about 220 km wide. However, because Phoebe is not very spherical in shape, it is wider in some places and narrower in others.
The surface of Phoebe is dark and heavily cratered. Craters are up to 80 km across, one of which has walls 16 kilometres high.
One day on Phoebe is equal to 9 h 16 min 55.2 s on Earth. Unlike the other moons of Saturn, Phoebe does not have synchronous orbit. This means that the time it takes for Phoebe to rotate once is different from the amount of time it takes for Pheobe to orbit once around Saturn.
One orbit around Saturn is equal to 550.6 days, or 1 and a half years! Phoebe’s orbit is retrograde, meaning it moves in the opposite direction of moons such as Rhea or Titan.
The dark colour of Phoebe led scientists to believe that it was a captured asteroid. However, recent pictures from Cassini show that Phoebe’s craters vary greatly in brightnes. This means that underneath the dark surface, there is a large quantity of ice. In addition,quantities of carbon dioxide have been detected on the surface, something which has never been found on an asteroid. It is believed that Phoebe is around 50% rock, unlike the other moons of Saturn, which are about 35% rock. For there reasons, scientists now think that Phoebe is a captured Centaur, an icy planetoid from the Kuiper Belt that orbits the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune.
If you stood on Phoebe, you would weigh only 1/25th of what you do on Earth! For example, a 100 lb person on Earth would weigh only 4 lbs on Phoebe.
Pheobe is named after a Titan in Greek mythology. She was the grandmother of Apollo and Artemis, and mother of Leto and Asteria.
Phoebe was diacovered by William Henry Pickering on March 17, 1899 from photographic plates that had been taken starting on August 16, 1898, at Arequipa, Peru by DeLisle Stewart. It was the first satellite to be discovered photographically.
de:Wikijunior Sonnensystem/ Saturn/ Phoebe
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Phoebe” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.
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