Janus: Potato Shaped Moon of Saturn
Janus is one of the stranger moons of Saturn.
First, Janus
travels in an unusual orbit around Saturn where it periodically trades places with its sister moon
Epimetheus,
which typically orbits about 50 kilometers away.
Janus,
although slightly larger than
Epimetheus, is
potato-shaped and
has a largest diameter of about 190 kilometers.
Next, Janus is covered with large craters but strangely appears to lack small craters.
One possible reason for this is a fine dust that might cover the small moon,
a surface also hypothesized for
Pandora and
Telesto.
Pictured above,
Janus was captured in front of the
cloud tops of
Saturn in late September.