An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

The sixteenth of → Saturn’s known → natural satellites. It is shaped like a potato with dimensions of 410 x 260 x 220 km and has a bizarre porous,
sponge-like appearance.

Many of the sponge holes or craters have bright walls, which suggests an abundance of → water  → ice. The crater floors are mostly the areas of the lowest → albedo and greatest red coloration. This may be because the average temperature of roughly -180 °C might be close enough to a temperature that would cause → volatiles to → sublimate, leaving the darker materials accumulated on the crater floors. Hyperion is one of the largest bodies in the → Solar System known to be so irregular. Its density is so low that it might house a vast system of caverns inside. Hyperion rotates chaotically and revolves around Saturn at a mean distance of 1,481,100 km.
It was discovered by two astronomers independently in 1848, the American William C. Bond (1789-1859) and the British William Lassell (1799-1880).

See also: Hyperion, in Gk. mythology was the
Titan god of light, one of the sons of Ouranos (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth), and the father of the lights of heaven, Eos the Dawn, Helios the Sun, and Selene the Moon.