Iapetus' trailing hemisphere

Filed under best of, pretty pictures, global views, amateur image processing, Saturn's moons, Iapetus, Cassini

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As Cassini departed Iapetus on September 10, 2007, it turned back to capture this 15-frame mosaic on the moon. The image shows Iapetus' trailing side, which is mostly covered with the bright white ice common to outer solar system icy satellites.

NASA / JPL / SSI / mosaic by Gordan Ugarkovic

The surface is stained with the dark material that covers Iapetus' leading side. The dark material fills some fissures, appears on the flanks of large basins, and even falls in linear chains in the upper left of this image. Also noteworthy are two enormous, unnamed, overlapping impact basins at the lower left. The enlarged version is only half the full resolution.

This version is only half the full resolution.

Copyright holder: Gordan Ugarkovic

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about September 10, 2007