OVERVIEW
] MOONEnceladus is a moon of Saturn. It orbits Saturn at a mean distance of 238 400 . It has a mass of 1.08×10²⁰ and a mean radius of 252.1 . It was discovered in 1789.
A small icy moon that vents plumes of salty water hundreds of kilometres into space through cracks at its south pole, feeding one of Saturn's rings.
- WHAT IT IS
- Moon of Saturn
- HOW FAR
- 238 400
- HOW BIG
- 252.1
- ONE ORBIT TAKES
- 32.9
Its average distance from Saturn, not from Earth.
Its mean radius: half the width across.
One trip round Saturn.
IMAGES
] 4 FRAMES- NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Public domain - Kevin Gill from Los Angeles, CA, United States
CC BY 2.0 - National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) / Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
Public domain - NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Public domain
CATALOG DATA
] 11 FIELDSThe raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.
WHAT IT IS MADE OF
What the object is in itself, rather than how it happens to look from here.
- Mean density
- 1.6097 ±0.0038
THE ORBIT
The shape of the path, where the object sits on it, and the instant those figures were true of. An orbit is a fit to observations and drifts away from the real one either side of its epoch.
- Orbits
- Saturn
- Orbital period
- 1.370218
- Eccentricity
- Inclination
- 0
WHEN IT WAS FOUND
Who first saw it, from where, and by what method.
- Discovered by
- W. Herschel
OTHER NAMES AND NUMBERS
The identifiers other catalogues file this object under, for anyone joining this data to theirs.
- Also known as
- Enceladus (moon), Saturn II
- JPL satellite code
- 602
- Wikidata item
- Q3303
- Wikipedia article
- Enceladus
WHERE THESE FIGURES CAME FROM
Which catalogue, paper or model each of the fields above was read from, where the source named one.
- Ephemeris
- SAT441
ALSO KNOWN AS
] 1 DESIGNATIONS- Common name Enceladus
CITE THIS PAGE
] DR1This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.
SpaceCatalog. Enceladus [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/enceladus
@misc{spacecatalog_enceladus,
author = {{SpaceCatalog}},
title = {{Enceladus}},
howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
year = {2026},
url = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/enceladus},
note = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from JPL Planetary Satellite Data.}
}The values above were taken from JPL Planetary Satellite Data — Public domain (NASA/JPL). Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue.
RECENT ACTIVITY
] 6 ITEMS- Cassini Approaches Saturn2026-08-23 · NASA APOD · IMAGE · Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, NASA, ESA, S. Van Vuuren et al.; Music: Adagio for Strings (NY Philharmonic)
- The Enceladian crater production function2026-08-14 · arXiv · PAPER · E. W. Wong, S. C. Werner, M. R. Kirchoff, R. Brasser
- Six Moons of Saturn2026-08-11 · NASA APOD · IMAGE · Alexandre Trentini
- Detailed Abundance Determination of Metal-Poor Stars with X-Shooter II. - Chemically Disentangling the Halo, Disk and GSE2026-08-07 · arXiv · PAPER · Benjamin D. C. Lowe, Luca Casagrande, Thomas Nordlander, Gary S. Da Costa, Norbert Christlieb
- Features in the visible spectra of the Enceladus particle plume and E ring: Potential evidence of organic materials and/or missing sub-micron particles2026-07-17 · arXiv · PAPER · M. M. Hedman, S. M. MacKenzie
- NASA Cassini Study Finds Organics ‘Fresh’ From Ocean of Enceladus2025-11-18 · NASA/JPL · RELEASE
NASA APOD · arXiv · NASA/JPL · UPDATED DAILY