These two color composite images of Saturn's moon Iapetus from Cassini's
visual and infrared mapping spectrometer were obtained on Dec. 31, 2004,
an hour and a half before the New Year, at a distance of 121,000
kilometers (75,186 miles), with a spatial resolution of about 60
kilometers (37 miles).
The three colors used in the left mosaic correspond to 1.01, 1.51, and 2
microns, while the right mosaic is comprised of images at 3.0, 3.21, and
4.60 microns. The two images show the vast difference in the composition
of the bright and dark regions of Iapetus. As one moves from the near
infrared 1 to 2 micron spectral region (left image) to the 3 to 5 micron
spectral region (right image) the bright, ice-rich region on Iapetus
turns dark and the dark region rich in organics turns bright.
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 visible and infrared
mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
For more information about the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit
http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/.
