Scientists on the Cassini mission to Saturn are poring through hundreds of images returned from the Sept. 10 flyby of Saturn's two-toned moon Iapetus. Pictures returned late Tuesday and early Wednesday show the moon's yin and yang--a white hemisphere resembling snow, and the other as black as tar.
Images show a surface that is heavily cratered, along with the mountain ridge that runs along the moon's equator. Many of the close-up observations focused on studying the strange 20-kilometer high (12 mile) mountain ridge that gives the moon a walnut-shaped appearance.
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©NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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Cassini surveys a bright landscape coated by dark material on Iapetus. This image shows terrain in the transition region between the moon's dark leading hemisphere and its bright trailing hemisphere.
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