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Cassini Returns Photos of Hyperion
imipak writes "The Cassini Saturn probe has captured the previously unseen northern polar region of Saturn's moon Hyperion. Its weirdly eroded surface looks like nothing else in the solar system seen so far, demonstrating once again that when it comes to planetary exploration, "expect the unexpected" is more than just glib advice from the Hitch-hiker's Guide!"
And it's a good thing!
Cassini was helped to more funding because WE the geeks of Web/Net WANT TO KNOW. We want to see our world, our Universe. We join advocacy groups and science foundations.
Keep up the good work NASA. Let private groups continue as well.
I see a 2nd space renaissance soon!
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
Having no formal education in planetology does not stop me to spout nonsense on slashdot:
:)
But the first picture looks like there was just big collision (old big crater) followed by lots of small collisions, without any erosion in between. I *think* I have seen similar features on the moon.
To have this picture is nonetheless an astonishing accomplishment.
I think that simply the lighting makes this view impressive
One thing that I have never seen in discussions of cratering, is elastic collisions. Everybody seems to assume that collisions are necessarily plastic: A smaller body smashes into a larger body and the smaller body is pulverised in the process.
However, in the asteroid belt especially, many collisions may be elastic, with bodies bouncing off each other like billiard balls, leaving behind large indentations. This could happen, as these bodies are moving in essentially the same direction and therefore collisions may not always have much force.
Oh well, what the hell...
If it's a microscopic picture, I have to ask - what browser are you using to view it?
Bad jokes aside, this is what a magnified grain of salt looks like:
(it's pretty enough to make desktop wallpaper)
Wow, that is kind of eerie.
The JPL page says the straight line is probably a fault or other geological feature, but the absence of any others in that area is a little suspicious.
I blew up that section a bit, and it looks a LOT like something diamond- or arrowhead-shaped came screeching along the surface and plowed into the side of a hill, kicking up surface material and burying the leading edge. The "buried" object itself seems to be very sharply defined with straight lines, as opposed to the more "natural" landscape around it.
An alien space probe would be neat, but I'm guessing it's a chunk of rock that impacted the moon at a weird angle. I'm sure Hoagland and his friends will have a field day with it, despite the crappy JPEG compression leading to terrible artifacts when it's blown up.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
The greyscale clear filter image I mentioned in another post is better for this work, and has less compression artifacts.
The line really looks like a depression in that one, whereas in the false colour image it could be a protrusion.
I blew it up considerably in Photoshop and increased the contrast to see details better. There are a number of smaller craters directly in the path of the line. If it were a rock impact, to my (non-astrophysicist/geologist) eye it looks like it behaved like a skipping stone - There are some bigger craters near where the top of the image cuts off the line, and about halfway along there's a pair on opposite sides of what appears to be a hill, as if it were skating along, used the hill as a jump, landed, and continued its movement.
The bigger feature at the end of the line seems more symmetrical in this version. It looks kind of like a Concorde... or a giant bird footprint. Watch out Tethys, Colonel Sanders is too far away to save you.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Actually there are a ton of reasons for such a surface.
1) Its by Saturn which has a massive gravitational pull. This causes Saturn to pull in a lot of comets, asteroids, and dust. Thus Saturn gets hit with a lot more debris then the planets in the inner solar system. This would also increase the risk of the moons getting hit with this debris as well and therefore will have more impacts then that of the planets and moons in which we know.
2) Saturn has rings filled with debris. So if the moon ever happened to swing into these rings it would go through hundreds if not thousands of impacts. That could have very well created the surface that you see. This could have happened at any time in the moons history and so is a very likely cause.
3) The moon could have some sort geological processes that are responsible for such a surface, however thats very unlikely.
Personally I would put my bet on number 2 cause it makes the most sense. If the moon went through on of Saturns rings especially when the rings might have just formed there would have been a lot of collisions leaving the surface scarred like you see in the picture.