Discovery of Rhea

Rhea, the second-largest moon of Saturn, was found by the Italian-French astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini at the Paris Observatory. It was the second Saturnian moon he discovered, after Iapetus the year before, and only the third known moon of Saturn at the time, following Titan. Rhea is an icy world with a heavily cratered surface, orbiting Saturn in a few days. It received its name much later, when John Herschel proposed naming Saturn's moons after Titans of Greek mythology. Detailed views of its surface came from the Voyager probes and especially from the Cassini spacecraft, which made several close flybys.

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