Best Space - Blog Posts

best and also an intresting one:)

The First Irregular Moon Discovered on this Day!

On September 19, 1848, astronomers William Cranch Bond, George Phillips Bond and William Lassell discovered the first non-sperical, irregular moon orbiting the planet Saturn, which they named Hyperion (Ὑπερίων) after the Greek god/titan who was the brother of Cronus (the Greek equivalent of Saturn). Looking like a giant potato in the sky, Hyperion is the second largest non-sperical satellite discovered, measuring 360.2×266×205.4 km. Lassell and Bond both observed Hyperion independently of each other only days apart, and only a year after William Herschel had published Results of Astronomical Observations made at the Cape of Good Hope in which he suggested the name scheme for the first seven moons of Saturn, and which Lassell and Bond used when they proposed Hyperion.

Images of Hyperion courtesy NASA/Cassini