Skip Navigation

Resources

Light & Dark on Iapetus

Light and Dark on Iapetus
Published: December 17, 2004

Light & Dark on Iapetus


Saturn's outermost large moon, Iapetus, has a bright, heavily cratered icy terrain and a dark terrain, as shown in this Voyager 2 image taken on August 22, 1981.


For more information go to the photojournal website.

ENLARGE

Related

This is a portion of a Cassini radar mapper image obtained by the Cassini spacecraft on its Dec. 21, 2008, flyby of Saturn's moon Titan. The area shown covers the southern boundary of an equatori...
More
This is a portion of a Cassini radar mapper image obtained by the Cassini spacecraft on its Dec. 21, 2008, flyby of Saturn's moon Titan.
At the Edge of Titan's Dunes
+ See annotated version This series of images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows the development of the largest storm seen on the planet since 1990. These true-color and composite near-true-colo...
More
This series of images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows the development of the largest storm seen on the planet since 1990.
Chronicling Saturn's Northern Storm -- Unannotated
The broad morphology of asteroid Vesta's mountain/central complex is clear in this image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft; it is a roughly circular topographic mound, which is approximately 200km in dia...
More
Anaglyph Image of the Mountain-Central Complex in Vesta's South Polar Region
Anaglyph Image of the Mountain-Central Complex in Vesta's South Polar Region
This image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows a portion of the northern hemisphere of dwarf planet Ceres from an altitude of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers). The image was taken on Sept. 21, 2015...
More
Dawn HAMO Image 44
Dawn HAMO Image 44
The low angle of the sun over Tethys' massive canyon, Ithaca Chasma (near the terminator, at right), highlights the contours of this enormous rift.
More
Tethys
Dark Chasm
Two-Tone Titan June 16, 2004 Full-Res: PIA05407 Cassini¿s finely-tuned vision reveals hazes high in the skies over Titan in this ...
More
Two-Tone Titan
Two-Tone Titan
+ Annotated version In this rare image taken on July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn's rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame. I...
More
Earth and moon from Saturn
The Day the Earth Smiled: Sneak Preview (unannotated)
Left to Right: Benjamin Morales, Michelle Juarez Taylor, Mateo N. Zavala, Saira G. Soto, Maria Kane Front: Maya Martinez
More
Pictured Left to Right: Benjamin Morales, Michelle Juarez Taylor, Mateo N. Zavala, Saira G. Soto, Maria Kane Front: Maya Martinez
Mural #1
A network of river channels is located atop Xanadu, the continent-sized region on Saturn's moon Titan. This radar image was captured by the Cassini Radar Mapper on April 30, 2006. These winding, ...
More
Titan's Xanadu region
Xanadu's Meandering Rivers
This false-color mosaic, made from infrared data collected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, reveals the differences in the composition of surface materials around hydrocarbon lakes at Titan, Saturn's ...
More
A false-color mosaic of Titan
Titan's Northern Lakes: Salt Flats? (Annotated version)
The Cassini spacecraft casts its gaze across four million kilometers of space for this snapshot of Iapetus, Saturn's most distant major moon. Iapetus -- at 1471 kilometers (914 miles) across -- is...
More
Iapetus
Taking a Longer View
The Cassini spacecraft captures Janus in the foreground, with Dione in the distance beyond. The image was taken two hours after Hiding Dione, in which Cassini imaged Dione beyond the rings. Janus...
More
Janus and Dione
Stepping Stone to Dione
This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows a part of Vesta's northern hemisphere, which is mostly in darkness. Since Dawn's arrival at asteroid Vesta the sun has not illuminated Vesta's most nort...
More
Islands in the Darkness
Islands in the Darkness
This map illustrates the planned imaging coverage for the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer, onboard the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during the probe's descent toward Titan's surface on ...
More
Black and white image detailing imaging coverage areas planned for the Huygens probe descent.
Go Huygens!
Saturn's chaotically tumbling moon Hyperion is captured in this view. At the top is a 130-kilometer-wide (80-mile) crater seen in some NASA Voyager spacecraft images. Detecting specific features i...
More
Saturn's moon Hyperion
What's the Spin
Saturn’s unusual appearance in this picture is a result of the planet being imaged via an infrared filter.
More
Saturn
Darkness Descending
The shadow of Saturn's moon Enceladus cast onto the planet's atmosphere appears like a drop of black ink on a canvas of Saturnian storms. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-ang...
More
Enceladus' shadow onto Saturn's atmosphere
A Shadow Amid the Storms
NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully completed its Oct. 1 flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus, capturing these raw, unprocessed images of the moon and its dramatic plumes of water vapor and ice. Th...
More
Enceladus
Enceladus Flyby E-14 (Raw Image #4)
These are the highest-resolution color images of any part of Saturn's rings, to date, showing a portion of the inner-central part of the planet's B Ring. 
More
Saturn rings
Colorful Structure at Fine Scales
Saturn's potato-shaped moon Prometheus is rendered in three dimensions in this close-up from Cassini. This 3-D view is a color composite picture made from two different black and white images that...
More
Saturn's potato-shaped moon Prometheus is rendered in three dimensions in this close-up from Cassini.
Prometheus Popping in 3-D
A Voyager 2 view of Neptune processed by an amateur image processor. The image was taken on August 31st 1989 around 17:00 UTC by Voyager 2’s narrow angle camera.
More
View of Neptune from Voyager 2
Neptune - August 31, 1989
In this artist's rendering, a distant sun forms a halo (refracted sunlight by ice crystals) amid streamers of pure water ice particles, which spew into space from cracks in the south polar surface ...
More
Artist's rendition of a sunset on Enceladus
Sunset on Enceladus
Scientists collect a meteorite in Antarctica.
More
Two scientists examining a meteorite on snow-covered ground.
Antarctic Meteorite
Enceladus' plume was found to have a comet-like chemistry by Cassini's Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer during its fly-through of the plume on Mar. 12, 2008. Water vapor, methane, carbon monoxide,...
More
This graph shows the chemical constituents in percentage of abundance found in comets compared to those found in Enceladus’ plume
Comets and Enceladus – Similar Chemistry
Bright, kinked ringlets fill the Encke Gap, while the F ring glows brilliantly and displays its signature knots and flanking, diffuse ringlets. This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings f...
More
Saturn's rings
Encke's Kinks

You Might Also Like