Featured planetary moon
Dione
Bright fractures cut across an older cratered surface.
Dione combines heavily cratered terrain with long bright tectonic fractures. Those wispy-looking markings are steep scarps and canyon systems rather than deposits painted onto an unchanged surface.
- Orbit representation
- Representative mean elements
- Surface
- derived map
Reference measurements
The numbers that shape this world
- Mean radius
- 561.4 km
- Mean orbital distance
- 377,700 kmSemi-major axis around the parent body.
- Orbital period
- 2.737 days
- Eccentricity
- 0.002
- Inclination
- 0°Local Laplace plane from the JPL pole
- Rotation
- Tidally locked
World portrait
A surface pulled apart
Dione’s visual identity comes from tectonic contrast: old impacts remain, but broad fractures show that the icy crust has also been reshaped from within.
System geometry
Dione in motion around Saturn
Dione travels at a mean orbital distance of 377,700 km and completes a circuit in 2.737 days. Its eccentricity of 0.002 and 0° inclination are read against Local Laplace plane from the JPL pole. Synchronous rotation keeps the same hemisphere broadly oriented toward the parent body.
Representation notes
What Explore is showing
JPL fitted mean elements describe general orbit shape and orientation; they are not an accurate ephemeris.
Reviewed official global map prepared as a 1K display texture. Small no-data seams were cleaned without inventing large-scale landmarks; final seam, pole and lighting review remains device-dependent.
Provenance