Moons of Saturn
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50 free Moons of Saturn trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Saturn has more known moons than any other world in the solar system, and no two of the big ones are alike. One hides its surface under a haze thicker than Earth's air, with rain, rivers and seas below. Another sprays jets of ice into space. A third looks so much like a famous film prop that the comparison is hard to unsee. This quiz starts with the names: who chose them, which myths they come from, and why the craters and mountains on some moons are named after characters from novels and old stories. It then works through the science, from Titan's weather to the jets of Enceladus, and the missions that found it all, Cassini above everything else. It suits anyone who likes space, mythology or a good odd fact. Some questions are easy and some will stretch a keen stargazer, and every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will know Saturn's family a good deal better by the end.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Saturn's moon Mimas, scarred by one enormous crater, resembles which science-fiction space station?
The Death Star
The Death Star likeness comes from a crater about a third as wide as Mimas itself, on the smallest known body pulled round by its own gravity.
Q 02Cassini's heat maps of Saturn's moon Tethys show a pattern shaped like which arcade game character?
Pac-Man
Pac-Man shows up in infrared because one stretch of Tethys's surface stays cooler at midday than the ground around it.
Q 03In Marvel Comics, which warlord nicknamed the Mad Titan was born on Saturn's largest moon?
Thanos
Thanos hails from Titan, and his name echoes Thanatos, a label for Freud's idea of a human drive toward destruction, which creator Jim Starlin met in a psychology class.
Q 04Mountains on Saturn's moon Titan are named after peaks from which author's fictional world?
J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth gives Titan a Doom Mons and an Erebor Mons, under a naming rule that borrows only fictional mountains.
Q 05Saturn's moon Titan is so large that it is wider than which planet of the solar system?
Mercury
Mercury is about 6% narrower than Titan yet more than twice as massive, because it is iron and rock while Titan is mostly ice.
Q 06Titan was thought the solar system's largest moon until 1980, when which rival proved bigger?
Ganymede
Ganymede took the title because Titan's deep haze had padded its apparent size: the solid surface underneath is about 120 km narrower than Ganymede.
Q 07Why was the Cassini spacecraft deliberately crashed into Saturn in 2017 as its fuel ran low?
To protect its moons
To protect its moons: a dead, drifting Cassini might one day have struck Titan or Enceladus and seeded a possibly habitable world with Earth microbes.
Q 08Which European probe, released by Cassini, made the first landing on a moon other than Earth's?
Huygens
Huygens parachuted onto Titan and kept transmitting for about 90 minutes, three times longer than its engineers had hoped.
Q 09Plains on Titan, such as Arrakis Planitia, are named after planets from which science-fiction series?
Dune
Dune and its desert world Arrakis suit Titan well: belts of dark sand dunes, some more than 100 km long, wrap around the moon's equator.
Q 10Titan is the only moon with air thicker than Earth's; which gas makes up most of that atmosphere?
Nitrogen
Nitrogen makes up about 95% of the air at Titan's surface, where the pressure is roughly one and a half times that at sea level on Earth.
Q 11Titan is the only world besides Earth with stable lakes and seas; which liquids fill them?
Methane and ethane
Methane and ethane stay liquid at about −179 °C, so Titan has rain, rivers and seas much as Earth does, with natural gas standing in for water.
Q 12Seen from space, the thick haze that hides Titan's surface gives the moon which colour?
Orange
Orange smog forms when sunlight breaks up gases high above Titan, and it is so thick that no camera saw the surface clearly until 2004.
Q 13Which spacecraft flew close past Titan in 1980, a detour that ended any chance of it visiting Pluto?
Voyager 1
Voyager 1 was aimed at Titan because the moon was known to have a substantial atmosphere, and the swing past it flung the craft out of the plane of the planets.
Q 21Which sponge-like moon of Saturn tumbles so chaotically that its spin cannot be predicted?
Hyperion
Hyperion was the first moon ever found that is not round, and it is so porous that roughly 40% of its volume is empty space.
Q 22Which outer moon of Saturn orbits backwards and was the first moon ever discovered using photography?
Phoebe
Phoebe sheds the dust of a vast, nearly invisible ring found around Saturn in 2009, which circles the planet backwards just as the moon does.
Q 23Which moon, named after the mother of Zeus and his siblings, is the second-largest of Saturn's moons?
Rhea
Rhea is still less than a third as wide as Titan, and Cassini found it wrapped in a whisper-thin atmosphere of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
Q 14Which NASA mission is designed to fly a robotic rotorcraft from site to site across Saturn's moon Titan?
Dragonfly
Dragonfly should find flying easy: Titan's air is about four times as dense as Earth's, while its gravity is under a seventh as strong.
Q 15Titan's haze blocks ordinary cameras, so which instrument did Cassini use to map its lakes and seas?
Radar
Radar pulses pass straight through the smog, and their echoes off the sea floor let scientists measure how deep Titan's seas are.
Q 16Titan always shows Saturn the same face, as the Moon does to Earth, because of which effect?
Tidal locking
Tidal locking also raises a permanent bulge of about 100 metres on the sides of Titan that face toward and away from Saturn.
Q 17In 2019, twenty new discoveries lifted Saturn past which planet as the one with the most known moons?
Jupiter
Jupiter had led the count since 2000, and another 62 moons announced in May 2023 pushed Saturn's total past 140.
Q 18Which small moon of Saturn is named after the first mortal woman of Greek myth, made on Zeus's orders?
Pandora
Pandora circles just outside Saturn's thin F ring and was long credited with helping to confine it, a job her inner neighbour now seems to do alone.
Q 19Which moon of Saturn, named after the Titan who stole fire, tugs streamers of material out of the F ring?
Prometheus
Prometheus dips into the ring's inner edge on each orbit, pulling out a streamer of material and leaving a dark channel behind.
Q 20Which moon of Saturn is two-toned, with a dark leading hemisphere and a bright trailing hemisphere?
Iapetus
Iapetus also wears a mountain ridge around its equator, with peaks more than 20 km high, that makes the whole moon look like a walnut.
Q 24Which moon of Saturn, named after a two-faced Roman god, swaps orbits with a neighbour every four years?
Janus
Janus and its partner never come closer than about 10,000 km: as one catches up, their gravity trades momentum and the two switch lanes.
Q 25Which tiny moon at the edge of Saturn's A ring is named after the Titan who held up the sky?
Atlas
Atlas got the name because it seemed to hold the rings on its shoulders, and a smooth ridge around its equator makes up about a quarter of its volume.
Q 26Which ravioli-shaped moon of Saturn keeps the Encke Gap in the A ring swept clear of particles?
Pan
Pan was predicted before it was seen: wavy edges on the gap betrayed a hidden moon, later found in old photos within 1° of the forecast spot.
Q 27Ice sprayed into space by geysers on Enceladus builds which of Saturn's rings?
The E ring
The E ring is vast yet nearly invisible: it stretches from the orbit of Mimas out to Titan and is more than 2,000 km thick.
Q 28What did Cassini find hidden beneath the icy crust of Enceladus, feeding the jets at its south pole?
A saltwater ocean
A saltwater ocean wraps the entire moon beneath the ice: Enceladus wobbles slightly as it orbits, which shows its crust floats free of the rocky core.
Q 29The four long fractures at the south pole of Enceladus, where its jets erupt, are nicknamed what?
Tiger stripes
Tiger stripes are far warmer than sunlight alone could make them, with spots near −116 °C amid ice below −180 °C, so the heat must come from inside.
Q 30Fresh snow from its own geysers gives Saturn's moon Enceladus which solar-system record?
Most reflective body
Most reflective body it is: Enceladus bounces back nearly all the sunlight that hits it, so its surface at noon is a frigid −198 °C.