Friday, September 30, 2005
Tethys & Hyperion
A few pages at JPL worth checking out from Cassini's double flyby last weekend. Your choice of movies made from Hyperion images. The odd, irregular, tumbling moon looks like a sponge here, but that's just the illusion created by dark crater floors.
Tethys looks like it partially melted then refroze. Check out this false color shot from less than 12,000 miles away. The same region as the human eye would see it. The photo captions explain briefly why the various false color shots are of interest to scientists.
When I was a kid, I could name all of Saturn's nine--then ten moons, but the new list has outgrown my memory. Thirty-four moons have now been named, and more which have been discovered by Cassini await formal nomenclature.
Here they are:
Albiorix, Atlas, Calypso, Dione , Enceladus, Epimetheus, Erriapo, Helene, Hyperion, Iapetus, Ijiraq, Janus, Kiviuq, Methone, Mimas, Mundilfari, Narvi, Paaliaq, Pallene, Pan, Pandora, Phoebe, Polydeuces, Prometheus, Rhea, Siarnaq, Skadi, Suttung, Tarvos, Telesto, Tethys, Thrym, Titan and Ymir.
Favorites, anyone?
