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Science 21 January 2005:
Vol. 307. no. 5708, p. 349
DOI: 10.1126/science.307.5708.349c
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Figure 2 This is the closest picture ever taken of Saturn's moon Iapetus--a composite of images caught on New Year's Eve by the Huygens-Cassini mission to Saturn and its big moon Titan. It reveals for the first time a striking feature: a 20-kilometer-wide ridge, rising as high as 13 kilometers, that appears to girdle the planet almost exactly along its equator. It could be a mountain belt or it could be a crack through which subsurface material has welled up, according to NASA officials. But no one has an explanation for its regularity.

Iapetus, 1436 kilometers in diameter, holds other mysteries. Almost half the moon is a heavily cratered region called Cassini Regio that is covered with dark material that scientists haven't been able to identify--it could have erupted out of the moon's interior, but it also might be debris from impact events on other, dark satellites. Because the darkness gets spottier at the poles, the new image supports the notion that it's from fallout.

CREDIT: NASA/JPL/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE




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