{"id":2665,"date":"2025-08-16T14:35:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T14:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/2665\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T14:35:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T14:35:06","slug":"aug-16-1898-phoebe-makes-an-appearance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/2665\/","title":{"rendered":"Aug. 16, 1898: Phoebe makes an appearance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tBack to Article List\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tToday in the history of astronomy, a photo is shot. The moon Phoebe will be discovered in it months later.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"620\" height=\"877\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/PIA06073_modest-e1755310930445.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThis mosaic of six images from the Cassini flyby of Phoebe showcases the irregular topography and plentiful craters. Credit: NASA\/JPL\/Space Science Institute\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>William Pickering discovered Phoebe, a moon of Saturn, in March 1899, based on photographic plates from August 1898.<\/li>\n<li>Phoebe&#8217;s discovery marked the first instance of a moon being discovered photographically.<\/li>\n<li>At the time of its discovery, Phoebe was considered Saturn&#8217;s outermost moon, though this is now known to be inaccurate.<\/li>\n<li>Phoebe&#8217;s irregular orbit, confirmed by the 2004 Cassini flyby, suggests it is a captured object.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In March of 1899, William Pickering discovered <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/saturn\/moons\/phoebe\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Phoebe<\/a>, a moon of Saturn, on photographic plates taken on Aug. 16, 1898, by DeLisle Stewart. It was the first moon to be discovered photographically, rather than observationally, and over a hundred years later, it would be the first target of the Cassini spacecraft. Phoebe orbits at a considerable distance from Saturn (about 8 million miles [nearly 13 million kilometers]), far enough that when it was discovered it was believed to be Saturn\u2019s outermost moon. (Today we know there are several smaller moons further out.) Phoebe also has a highly irregular orbit, suggesting it\u2019s a captured object, and observations during <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpl.nasa.gov\/news\/cassini-makes-close-observations-of-phoebe\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the 2004 Cassini flyby<\/a> bore that out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List Today in the history of astronomy, a photo is shot. The moon Phoebe will&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,19,17,3154,5,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-2665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-moons","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}