Pioneer 11: Verskil tussen weergawes

 

''Pioneer 11'' imaged and nearly collided with one of Saturn's small moons, passing at a distance of no more than {{convert|4000|km|mi|sp=us}}. The object was tentatively identified as [[Epimetheus (moon)|Epimetheus]], a moon discovered the previous day from ''Pioneer''{{'}}s imaging, and suspected from earlier observations by Earth-based telescopes. After the [[Voyager program|Voyager]] flybys, it became known that there are two similarly-sized moons (Epimetheus and [[Janus (moon)|Janus]]) in the same orbit, so there is some uncertainty about which one was the object of Pioneer's near-miss. ''Pioneer 11'' encountered Janus on September 1, 1979 at 14:52 [[UTC]] at a distance of 2500 km and [[Mimas (moon)|Mimas]] at 16:20 UTC the same day at 103000 km.

 

Besides Epimetheus, instruments located another previously undiscovered small moon and an additional ring, charted Saturn's magnetosphere and magnetic field and found its planet-size moon, [[Titan (moon)|Titan]], to be too cold for life. Hurtling underneath the ring plane, the probe sent back pictures of Saturn's rings. The rings, which normally seem bright when observed from Earth, appeared dark in the Pioneer pictures, and the dark gaps in the rings seen from Earth appeared as bright rings.