The moons of Saturn

This composite image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 6 June 2018, shows the ringed planet Saturn with six of its 62 known moons. From left to right, the moons visible in this image are Dione, Enceladus, Tethys, Janus, Epimetheus, and Mimas.

The moons seen here are all icy and cratered. Enceladus is considered a candidate for the existence of primitive life because it is outgassing water vapour from a subsurface ocean. Based on data from the Cassini mission to Saturn, scientists hypothesise that a small, wayward moon like one of these disintegrated 200 million years ago to form Saturn’s ring system.

The image is a composite because the moons move during the Saturn exposures, and individual frames must be realigned to make a colour portrait.