Best view yet of Iapatus from Cassini

[lostfisherman]

I was waiting for the images to appear on the Cassini raw image site and they eventually did. Check out how rugged the limb looks.

Clear filtered image
http://saturn1.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/ ... geID=24247

There are red, blue and green images too, for those who can handle their gimp.

[ArneB]

Wow! The bright part is really shiny as if it was made out of metal or clear ice or something. I can't wait till the next pass of Titan. The previous pass showed a weird suface which i mistook for clouds at first sight. I wonder if the surface is covered with hydrocarbon sludge?

Just look at this:

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Wow! The bright part is really shiny as if it was made out of metal or clear ice or something.

More likely is that the CCD was oversaturated there, which is why it's completely white. The white region obviously has a very high albedo.

I can't wait till the next pass of Titan. The previous pass showed a weird suface which i mistook for clouds at first sight. I wonder if the surface is covered with hydrocarbon sludge?

I think a lot of people are wondering about that . I don't think you mistook the surface for clouds though - that's basically all that was visible. The dark regions are probably the surface itself (though bear in mind that these are Near IR images - the dark areas are actually bright water ice in the visible spectrum).

My bet is that the surface is going to look very much like Ganymede's, with bands of bright icy terrain cutting through dark terrain. There are hints of that through the clouds here. Whatever is there should be revealed in the next flyby, which will use the radar to penetrate the clouds.

[ArneB]

My bet is that the surface is going to look very much like Ganymede's

Surprising!