Cassini closes in on Iapetus

[Rick]

Saturn watchers on the Cassini mission are preparing for another fly-by, this time of the oddly shaped moon Iapetus.

The Cassini probe is set to pass within 1,600 kilometres of the moon, roughly 100 times closer than the last encounter in 2004. It is also the last time the probe is scheduled to fly past the moon, and mission scientists are keen to capture as much data as they can.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/06/cassini_iapetus/

[Rick]

No comment. Just go look...

See: http://ciclops.org/view_event.php?id=68

[Rick]

Cassini has sent back a mountain-load of work for its mission scientists, having shot literally hundreds of pictures of Saturn's moon Iapetus on its fly-by this weekend.

The pictures show the stark contrast between the moon's two hemispheres. One is described as being as black as tar, the other as white as freshly fallen snow. They also reveal new detail of the 12-mile-high mountain ridge that runs around the moon's equator.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/13/yin_yang/

[Rick]

...and today's APOD has a 3D image (red/blue glasses required) of the equatorial ridge.

[Rick]

The fearsome heat of the Sun is being blamed for the strange yin-yang appearance of Saturn's moon Iapetus.

Even at an average distance of roughly 1.5 billion kilometres from the sun, Iapetus is being gradually toasted on one side.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/09/moon_dark_side/

...and catch APOD too: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071010.html

[Rick]

Scientists have come up with a novel theory to explain the unexplained terrain on one of Saturn's icy moons.

The most striking feature of Iapetus is a bulging ridge, which encircles the moon's equator and reaches an altitude of 20km in places.

A new theory suggests the ridge formed when the moon went from a relatively fast-spinning body to one spinning more slowly.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7965332.stm

[mickw]

New data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft at Saturn helps explain the bizarre yin-yang appearance of the ringed planet's odd moon Iapetus, where one side is dark and the other is bright.

The images and heat-mapping data collected by Cassini support the leading explanation of the moon's strange appearance, which suggests that migrating ice makes half the moon reflective and bright, while the other half is dust-covered and dark.

The new findings are described in two papers published online Dec. 10 in the journal Science. The Cassini spacecraft launched in 1997 and has been orbiting around Saturn since 2004.

Astronomers have been puzzled by the moon's two-toned exterior for more than 300 years. When the French-Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovered Iapetus in 1671, he noticed that the surface is much darker on its leading side, the side that faces forward in its orbit around Saturn

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/091210-saturn-cassini-iapetus.html

[RobertM]

!!!WARNING!!!

That last link was caught by my antivirus s/w as containing a Trojan downloader called JS.Shadraem.a

Robert