This portrait of Iapetus is from Cassini's first encounter with the distant moon, on December 31, 2004, just before the Huygens descent. The flyby produced astonishing views of the moon, revealing its "belly band" of mountains as well as several previously undiscovered giant impact basins. The image is an approximately natural color mosaic taken at a distance of about 173,000 kilometers. The mosaic consists of two footprints which were the only ones where multispectral coverage exists at this point in th

NASA / JPL / SSI / color composite by Gordan Ugarkovic