Dark side of a Saturnian moon: Iapetus is coated with foreign dust
Friday, December 11, 2009 - 01:21
in Astronomy & Space
Iapetus is often called Saturn's most bizarre moon, due to its starkly contrasting hemispheres -- one black as coal, the other white as snow. Images taken by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, orbiting Saturn since 2004, offer the most compelling evidence to date of why and how the moon got its yin-yang appearance, as well as clues to how other such satellites might have formed in the early universe.