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Overview. Iapetus has been called the yin and yang of the Saturn moons because its leading hemisphere has a reflectivity (or albedo) as dark as coal (albedo 0.03-0.05 with a slight reddish tinge) and its trailing hemisphere is much brighter at 0.5-0.6.
Iapetus is heavily cratered, and Cassini images have revealed large impact basins, at least five of which are over 350 km (220 mi) wide. The largest, Turgis , has a diameter of 580 km (360 mi); [24] its rim is extremely steep and includes a scarp about 15 km (9.3 mi) high. [25]
Apr 27, 2019 · Iapetus is heavily cratered, with the largest known crater being the 580 km wide Turgis Crater; which is 40% of the moon's diameter! The Voyager I and Voyager II encounters during 1980 and 1981 validated Cassini's original observations revealing a trailing hemisphere lighter in colour.
Iapetus has a bright and a dark hemisphere, with a ridge running along its equator. The dark region is called Cassini Regio and is the principal feature of the leading hemisphere. The surface of Iapetus is heavily cratered, with large impact basins up to 580 kilometres across.
Jan 7, 2005 · January 7, 2005. On New Year's Eve 2004, Cassini flew past Saturn's intriguing moon Iapetus, capturing the four visible light images that were put together to form this global view. The scene is dominated by a dark, heavily-cratered region, called Cassini Regio, that covers nearly an entire hemisphere of Iapetus.
Feb 5, 2013 · To make it even more puzzling, when the Cassini spacecraft passed at only 1640 km from Iapetus, it showed that both hemispheres are heavily cratered. Now, NASA researchers believe the dark...
Size. Iapetus has an equatorial radius of about 735 km (457 mi) with the dimensions 1,492.0 × 1,492.0 × 1,424 km. This large body is not in hydrostatic equilibrium. Compared to the Earth’s moon, Iapetus is 2.4 times smaller. It is also smaller than the largest moon of Saturn, Titan, by about 3.5 times.
