Saturn Interlude: Themes and Mysteries

[eyelessgame]

At this point, when I go over this list, I notice a couple themes about Saturn and her moons: they've taken a lot of major-impact damage, there are a bunch of complicated gravitational relationships, and there sure are a lot of little rocks around. Oh, right, and there are these dazzlingly bright rings, which none of the other gas giants have

Comments

[barking_iguana]

Do Jupiter and Saturn pass close enough to each other so that (given their tremendous mass) they have a significant effect on the other's moons?

[eyelessgame]

Not much. Jupiter comes no closer to Saturn than it does to Earth: Saturn's twice as far from the Sun as Jupiter. While there can be tiny effects, it's not enough to be noticeable. (That said, Jupiter does pull on everything a bit - it has very slight effects on the inner planets, which are as far from Jupiter as Saturn is. But Jupiter is constantly this close to the inner planets, and only has a close approach to Saturn every twenty years; most of the time it's much further.)