Featured planetary moon
Rhea
A large, quiet ice world carrying a long impact record.
Rhea is Saturn’s second-largest moon and presents a restrained landscape of ice, craters and tectonic markings. Its low density points to an interior dominated by water ice with a smaller rocky component.
- Orbit representation
- Representative mean elements
- Surface
- derived map
Reference measurements
The numbers that shape this world
- Mean radius
- 763.5 km
- Mean orbital distance
- 527,200 kmSemi-major axis around the parent body.
- Orbital period
- 4.518 days
- Eccentricity
- 0.001
- Inclination
- 0.3°Local Laplace plane from the JPL pole
- Rotation
- Tidally locked
World portrait
Quiet does not mean featureless
Rhea’s value is comparative. Its subdued geology makes the active surfaces of Enceladus and Titan more legible within the same Saturnian system.
System geometry
Rhea in motion around Saturn
Rhea travels at a mean orbital distance of 527,200 km and completes a circuit in 4.518 days. Its eccentricity of 0.001 and 0.3° 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