Rhea

Source: NASA

Meet Rhea, whatta knockout.  My word for this one is “striking.”

Though obsolete in geologic outbursts, this one has some standout features.  Rhea takes second place for the largest moon of Saturn, and bears quite the resemblance to sister moons, Dione and Tethys.  Temperature, reflectivity and composition are fairly common ground shared between this sweet trio ((Rhea) temp: -281 degrees F / high albedo / water ice composition).  The interesting and weird thing about Rhea’s insides are that we have indications that they aren’t differentiated (separated), but instead all mashed up together…so essentially a “frozen dirty snowball.”  With the moons distance from Saturn (drumroll, please…..327,500 miles), it barely has a tug or pull, making the surface somewhat permanent.  The topography of Rhea is slightly different than its “twin” sisters, with far more rocky plains due to either fewer erasures from tidal flexing, or more weighted assaults.  Speaking of surface features, craters on the satellites surface are pretty old. By OLD, I mean freaking four billion years old. Four billion years old.  I don’t have words.  Just like Dione, Rhea has these gorgeous “wisps” that brush across the surface.  What look like wisps are actually canyons extending hundreds of miles across the face of the moon.  What a sight, can you even fathom? Moving on from the icy surface into the atmosphere or exosphere, I should say:  Cassini flew by Rhea and detected a few amazing things.  First being, Rhea has an exosphere (downgraded atmosphere) composed of carbon dioxide and oxygen, sound familiar?  What makes this super neat is that this is the first time a spacecraft has detected oxygen on a MOON…actually just somewhere other than Earth in general.  Second, Rhea has rings, folks.  Cassini observed some space material orbiting the moon- which makes Rhea the first moon to be discovered having rings.  The more you read on the more your socks just fly off, I love it.  Moons like Rhea always catch me off guard and stun me.  Upon first observation, you can obviously detect the immense beauty from all these satellites just leaking everywhere.  It’s when you start to probe and investigate and reveal their true nature when their heart comes out.  It’s funny because moons don’t have hearts, duh.  But moons bear resemblance to humans and to think that God made these things so unfathomably gorgeous and mysterious…and he made us even MORE of that?! You and I are something special and grand, my friend.  You are a prize and a treasure, I’m glad I can take a few moments of your day to share with you what consumes my days + nights.