Search results
Jan 1, 2005 · This image reveals a heavily cratered surface and shows the boundary between Iapetus' bright trailing hemisphere and Cassini Regio -- a large, dark region that covers the leading hemisphere of the moon’s surface.
Iapetus has a very slow rotation, longer than 79 days. Such a slow rotation means that the daily temperature cycle is very long, so long that the dark material can absorb heat from the sun and warm up. (The dark material absorbs more heat than the bright icy material.)
Jan 7, 2005 · This view of Saturn's moon Iapetus captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows how the dark, heavily cratered terrain of Cassini Regio transitions to a bright, icy terrain at high latitudes.
People also ask
Is Iapetus cratered?
Where is Cassini's image of Iapetus located?
Why is Iapetus so difficult to see?
What do the two global images of Iapetus show?
Oct 8, 2007 · The region appears heavily cratered, particularly in the north and south polar regions. Near the top of the mosaic, numerous impact features visible in NASA Voyager 2 spacecraft images (acquired in 1981) are visible, including the craters Ogier and Charlemagne.
Images from the Cassini orbiter, which passed within 1,227 km (762 miles), show that both Cassini Regio and the Terra's are heavily cratered. The color dichotomy of scattered patches of light and dark material in the transition zone between Cassini Regio and the bright areas exists at very small scales, down to the imaging resolution of 30 ...
- 3.26 km/s
- Saturn
- 6700000 km²
Cassini’s distance from Iapetus ranged from 880,537 to 716,678 kilometers (547,140 to 445,323 miles) between the two images, and the Sun-Iapetus-spacecraft, or phase, angle changed from 21 to 22 degrees. Resolution achieved in the original images was 5.2 and 4.3 kilometers (3.2 and 2.7 miles) per pixel, respectively.
Dec 17, 2004 · Some of the interesting variety among Saturn's many known icy satellites is revealed in these Voyager 2 images. Enceladus' bright, relatively uncratered terrain is coated with water ice. The smooth areas suggest that internal heating has melted portions of the surface, possibly even leading to "eruptions" that feed Saturn's tenuous E ring. Iapetus, on the other hand, has a leading face as dark ...
