The transition region from Saturn's moon Iapetus' dark leading hemisphere
to its bright trailing hemisphere is a complicated patchwork of craters
and highlands, with low elevations filled in by dark material.
An explanation of the pattern visible here might be key to a full
understanding of the bright/dark dichotomy on Iapetus, 1,468 kilometers
(912 miles) across.
The view is centered on the equator and covers an area 711 kilometers wide
by 417 kilometers tall (442 by 259 miles).
The giant equatorial ridge visible on the dark leading hemisphere is not
present anymore in this region. Instead, large, isolated mountains more
than 10 kilometers (6 miles) tall are spread along the equator. These
mountains show bright western flanks, while the surrounding lowlands are
generally dark.
The bright mountains at center right, surrounded by dark terrain, are also
visible in the stereo view PIA08379. The region of Iapetus seen in this
mosaic is also visible in the color full-disk mosaic PIA08384.
The mosaic is an orthographic projection consisting of 21 image footprints
across the surface of Iapetus. The view is centered on terrain near 0.1
degree north latitude, 199 degrees west longitude, in the quadrant of
Iapetus that faces away from Saturn. Image scale is approximately 83
meters (272 feet) per pixel. An orthographic view is most like the view
seen by a distant observer looking through a telescope.
The clear spectral filter images in this mosaic were obtained with the
Cassini spacecraft narrow- angle camera on Sept. 10, 2007, at distances
ranging from 13,857 to 21,846 kilometers (8,610 to 13,574 miles) from
Iapetus.
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/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging
team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
