Saturns Hyperion in Natural Color
Explanation:
What lies at the bottom of
Hyperion's strange craters?
To help find out, the
robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting
Saturn
swooped past the
sponge-textured moon in 2005 and
2010 and took images of unprecedented detail.
A six-image mosaic from the 2005 pass,
featured here in natural color, shows a remarkable world strewn with
strange craters and an
odd sponge-like surface.
At the bottom of most craters lies some type of
unknown dark reddish material.
This material appears similar to that covering part of another of Saturn's moons,
Iapetus, and might sink into the
ice moon as it better
absorbs warming sunlight.
Hyperion
is about 250 kilometers across,
rotates chaotically,
and has a density so low that it
likely houses
a vast system of
caverns inside.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
