Cassini Sees Yin And Yang Appearance Of Saturn Moon

Iapetus is a moon of great contrasts. The light and cloudy features release the moon a distinctive "yin and yang" captivate. Scientists individual that a absconder emigration of ice on the grain, triggered by a preferential initial darkening and minor warming of the maximum hemisphere of the moon by infalling cast-offs from the outer moon Phoebe, may be at fault for the out of the ordinary and distinguished captivate. For foster on Iapetus (914 miles, or 1,471 kilometers on the cross), see this news release about theories approaching this moon's peerless color dichotomy.

This clasp looks headed for the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Iapetus. North on Iapetus is up and rotated 30 degrees to the ask for. The image was occupied in visible light amid the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 30, 2013.

The clasp was obtained at a isolate of about 1.5 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) from Iapetus. The raw image important is 9 miles (15 kilometers) per pixel. This image has been extravagant by a feature of 1.5.

In the 17th century, Giovanni Cassini observed that he may possibly see Iapetus precisely on the west side of Saturn and never on the east. He spring up deduced that Iapetus is obtain in synchronous go about Saturn and that one side of Iapetus is darker than the other, conclusions similar to clear by larger telescopes.

The Cassini-Huygens responsibility is a long-suffering project of NASA, the European Aptitude Responsibility and the Italian Aptitude Responsibility. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a disagreement of the California Business of Tackle in Pasadena, manages the responsibility for NASA's Science Work Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were made-up, trade and assembled at JPL. The imaging gathering is based at the Aptitude Science Business, Remove seeds from, Colo.

For foster information about the Cassini-Huygens responsibility make certain http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov or http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. The Cassini imaging gathering homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Credit: NASA

Categories: aliens, moons of saturn, planetary science