Categories: Saturn

Cassini’s First View of Iapetus

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
This Cassini image hints at the split personality of Saturn?s 1436 kilometer (892 mile)-wide moon Iapetus. The Voyager spacecraft first imaged this curious yin/yang moon, with its light and dark hemispheres. The dark hemisphere is the side of Iapetus that leads in its orbit. In this view, both light and dark areas are visible.

The image was taken in visible light with the narrow angle camera on May 23, 2004, from a distance of 20.2 million kilometers (12.5 million miles) from Iapetus. The image scale is 12 kilometers (75 miles) per pixel. The image was magnified to aid visibility.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.

Fraser Cain

Fraser Cain is the publisher of Universe Today. He's also the co-host of Astronomy Cast with Dr. Pamela Gay. Here's a link to my Mastodon account.

Recent Posts

Quantum Correlations Could Solve the Black Hole Information Paradox

The black hole information paradox has puzzled physicists for decades. New research shows how quantum…

14 hours ago

M87 Releases a Rare and Powerful Outburts of Gamma-ray Radiation

In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration made history when it released the first-ever…

17 hours ago

Astronomers Find a Black Hole Tipped Over on its Side

Almost every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole churning away at its core. In…

21 hours ago

NASA is Developing Solutions for Lunar Housekeeping’s Biggest Problem: Dust!

Through the Artemis Program, NASA will send the first astronauts to the Moon since the…

2 days ago

Where’s the Most Promising Place to Find Martian Life?

New research suggests that our best hopes for finding existing life on Mars isn’t on…

2 days ago

Can Entangled Particles Communicate Faster than Light?

Entanglement is perhaps one of the most confusing aspects of quantum mechanics. On its surface,…

3 days ago