Featured planetary moon
Tethys
An icy world crossed by a canyon on a global scale.
Tethys is a low-density moon dominated by water ice. The vast Ithaca Chasma and the Odysseus impact basin reveal stresses and collisions that affected a large fraction of the body.
- Orbit representation
- Representative mean elements
- Surface
- derived map
Reference measurements
The numbers that shape this world
- Mean radius
- 531.1 km
- Mean orbital distance
- 295,000 kmSemi-major axis around the parent body.
- Orbital period
- 1.888 days
- Eccentricity
- 0.001
- Inclination
- 1.1°Local Laplace plane from the JPL pole
- Rotation
- Tidally locked
World portrait
A small moon with planet-wide structure
On Tethys, a canyon system can be interpreted only in relation to the moon’s full circumference. The body page makes that whole-world scale the main comparison.
System geometry
Tethys in motion around Saturn
Tethys travels at a mean orbital distance of 295,000 km and completes a circuit in 1.888 days. Its eccentricity of 0.001 and 1.1° 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 partial imagery prepared as a 1K display texture. Unobserved areas are softly completed from the observed hemisphere so the globe remains natural-looking in motion; the body summary identifies those regions as reconstructed rather than directly observed. Final seam, pole and landmark review remains device-dependent.
Provenance