- Original Caption Released with Image:
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Saturn's moon Hyperion's crater, Meri, blooms in this extreme
color-enhanced view. Meri is overprinted by a couple of smaller craters
and displays dark material on its floor that is characteristic of many
impact sites on this moon. The walls of craters seen here are noticeably
smoother on their sloping sides than around their craggy rims.
This crater is also visible at lower right in the large Hyperion mosaic
(see PIA07761).
To create this false-color view, ultraviolet, green and infrared images
were combined into a single black and white picture that isolates and
maps regional color differences. This "color map" was then superimposed
over a clear-filter image.
The combination of color map and brightness image shows how the colors
vary across the moon's surface in relation to geologic features. The
origin of the color differences is not yet understood, but may be caused
by subtle differences in the surface composition or the sizes of grains
making up the icy soil.
The images used to create this false-color view were acquired on Sept. 26,
2005, at a mean distance of 17,900 kilometers (11,100 miles) from
Hyperion. Image scale is about 110 meters (360 feet) per pixel.
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.
- Image Credit:
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NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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