Tethys

Source: NASA

Space eyeball? Death star round two?  It’s however you see it, but this is Tethys.

I’ve so thoroughly enjoyed learning about + painting these beauties for you all to see.  Truly, thank you for looking and reading on.  This one is a treasure, hang tight.  Saturn’s fifth largest moon, accommodating almost all water-ice and rock.  All that water ice means it has a high albedo, or reflectivity.  And you guessed it, this icy planet is COLD. -305 degrees Fahrenheit cold. Bundle up.  Tethys makes a complete orbit about Saturn in 45.3 hours, always having the same face towards the giant.  Now what is so freaking amazing is that Tethys has its own subsystem with two little moons, Telesto and Calypso.  All three moons function as a unit, synchronized and operating in union for millions of years.  The real low down is this moons two main features: the Odysseus Crater and Ithaca Chasma.  Taking up 2/5 of its face and a whopping 250 miles in diameter, Odysseus should have knocked Tethys out. Straight up.  But it didn’t, because at the time of the impact, the surface was likely molten and impressionable. Pause, wow. To continue, this crater is actually a lot different that Mimas’ (death star vader moon).  It’s more shallow in comparison to its sister crater, Hershel (but no less sparkling).  The Ithaca Chasma is a valley running from the northern pole to the southern pole (62 miles wide, 2-3 miles deep).  There are multiple theories on how this depression got here, but let’s just stick to this: it is old AF (insert as you please).  Like every other moon I’ve ogled over, Tethys has its mysteries. Strange red arcs, like Europa’s, have been spotted on the surface.  Every moon has an enigma.  I think that was a part of perfect design, so we’d keep searching. As I learn about each moon, it never fails. There is always more to learn, discover, observe, treasure, analyze and glorify.