As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m incredibly excited about Cassini’s recently flyby of Saturn’s moon Iapetus. Passing only 1,200 km (800 miles) above the surface of the bizarre moon, the spacecraft has captured dozens of new images. Perhaps now planetary geologists can figure out what’s caused that amazing ridge, the walnut shape, and the bizarre light and dark hemispheres.
The moment the new Cassini images came in, Emily Lakdawalla from the Planetary Society jumped on them, and started analyzing. She was able to stitch together several images into a large mosaic that just looks amazing. Especially that ridge. What is up with that ridge?
There are some original raw images available from the flyby from NASA, but I highly recommend you check out Emily’s analysis while we wait for NASA’s official results.
Like a performer preparing for their big finale, a distant star is shedding its outer…
For a little over a month now, the Earth has been joined by a new…
Despite decades of study, black holes are still one of the most puzzling objects in…
74 million kilometres is a huge distance from which to observe something. But 74 million…
Astronomers have only been aware of fast radio bursts for about two decades. These are…
How do you weigh one of the largest objects in the entire universe? Very carefully,…