Topical Tens: 8 April: Telesto

Sunday 7 April 2019

Telesto, one of Saturn's moons, was discovered on this date in 1980. Here are ten things you might not know about it.

Telesto was discovered by four astronomers, Brad Smith, Harold Reitsema, Stephen Larson, and John Fountain, using ground-based observations.
They initially called it S/1980 S 13.
Three years later it was officially named Telesto after a Greek Oceanid, one of the 3,000 daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys. Telesto was the personification of the divine blessing or success. Greek sailors would make offerings in her name to ensure a safe and successful voyage.
Its orbit of Saturn is closely related to those of two other moons, Tethys and Calypso. Telesto orbits at the front of this three-moon group, so it is called the "leading Trojan."
It takes 45.3 hours to orbit Saturn.
It's a very small moon - 34 by 28 by 26 kilometers (21 by 17 by 16 miles).
Telesto is 183,000 miles (295,000 kilometers) from Saturn.
In shape, it resembles a Potato.
The Cassini probe performed a distant flyby of Telesto on October 11, 2005. The images it sent back show Telesto's surface as smooth, with few impact craters. This has suggested that it is covered with a mantle of fine, dust-like icy material.
In the computer game Destiny, there is a fusion rifle named after Telesto. The weapon was created from a cloud of material discovered around the moon after the Battle of Saturn.

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