Click on image for Iapetus Spins and Tilts Movie
Saturn's two-faced moon tilts and rotates for Cassini in this mesmerizing
movie sequence of images acquired during the spacecraft's close encounter
with Iapetus on Nov. 12, 2005.
The encounter begins with Cassini about 850,000 kilometers (530,000 miles)
from Iapetus. Cassini approached over the moon's northern hemisphere,
allowing for excellent full views of a 575-kilometer-wide (360-mile)
impact basin in northeastern Cassini Regio. Astronomer Giovanni Cassini
discovered the light and dark faces of Iapetus' two hemispheres (among
his other Saturn discoveries), and the dark region. The spacecraft also
bears his name.
Also prominent in these images is a 380-kilometer-wide (235-mile) basin to
the northwest of the larger basin, in the transition zone between Cassini
Regio and a brighter region called Roncevaux Terra, with its
150-kilometer-wide (95-mile) crater Roland (at the top, with a prominent
central peak).
The movie takes Cassini to its closest approach, at about 415,000
kilometers (260,000 miles) from Iapetus, and then looks back at the moon's
receding crescent. The sequence ends with Cassini at a distance of about
460,000 kilometers (285,000 miles) from the moon.
Iapetus is 1,468 kilometers (912 miles) across.
Images taken using ultraviolet, green and infrared spectral filters with
the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera were combined to create
false-color frames for this movie. The color seen here is similar to that
produced in (red, green and blue) natural color views. Resolution in the
original images taken at closest approach to Iapetus was about 3
kilometers (2 miles) per pixel. The color frames were resized to create
the movie.
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 mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at
http://ciclops.org.
