Global Map of Iapetus
Here’s a cool global map of Saturn’s moon Iapetus, stitched together from the various Cassini flybys. Cassini didn’t see the entire moon, so the imaging team put in photographs from Voyager to cover the missing polar regions.
You can see its distinct equatorial ridge on the left-hand side of the image, and the mottled dark and light patches that give the moon its Yin-Yang look. The image scale is 803 km per pixel.
It’s a little old, but check out this video of the most recent Cassini Iapetus flyby back in September 2007.
Original Source: NASA/JPL/SSI News Release
Recent Posts
Neutron Stars With Less Mass Than A White Dwarf Might Exist, and LIGO and Virgo Could Find Them
Theoretically a neutron star could have less mass than a white dwarf. If these light…
Webb Observes Protoplanetary Disks that Contradict Models of Planet Formation
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was specifically intended to address some of the greatest…
James Webb’s Big Year for Cosmology
The James Webb Space Telescope was designed and built to study the early universe, and…
A Mission to Dive Titan’s Lakes – and Soar Between Them
Titan is one of the solar system's most fascinating worlds for several reasons. It has…
Top Astronomy Events for 2025
Catching the best sky watching events for the coming year 2025. Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS…
Is the Universe a Fractal?
For decades cosmologists have wondered if the large-scale structure of the universe is a fractal:…