A remarkable Cassini picture: Hyperion (moon of Saturn)

Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn and Titan ^ | 09/30/2005 | Cassini

[Lockbar]

[Arthalion]

Yeah, that will be a fun one to explain. How does a moon, even a small one like this, absorb an impact capable of cratering 75% of its diameter and NOT shatter? The size of the crater versus the size of the moon seems impossible.

[dbwz]

That moon looks like a piece of coral I picked up off a FL beach many, many years ago.

Very cool stuff!

[RexBeach]

How far away is this moon?

[Mamzelle]

bump--thanks for the post

[MineralMan]

"Electrons orbit the nucleus the way the planets orbit the sun. God's construction is simply yet complex."

No, they don't. That old image of atomic structure has been known to be false for a long, long time. It used to be the simple form that atomic structure was taught to grammar school children, but they don't even teach that to them any more.

There's no similarity between a solar system and an atom, really. Time to do some reading, my friend.

[FormerACLUmember]

Awesome snowboarding down the walls of that big impact crater, dude!

[ChadGore]

When I first looked at the image, I saw what appeared to be many stretching artifacts that often come from 2D data being extrapolated onto a 3D model, as is common with many of the images from mars.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image-details.cfm?imageID=1762

What I found interesting is that this photo was a "live shot". The stretched walls of the smaller crater transitioning into the edge of the larger one must actually exist.

It's amazing, really. If you follow the "moons are collections from rings" theory as I do, this is a living example of a moon 1/2 way through the debris collection phase.

[manwiththehands]

This is your brain on drugs.

[MineralMan]

That's a heckuva photo. I think it's my next wallpaper.

[TravisBickle]

[js1138]

Shock and Awe ping.

[aspiring.hillbilly]

Flying objects out in space have no weight only the gravity of the body they hit imparts weightiness to the projectile, so an impact would not be as shattering hitting a small chunk of stuff like this as it would if it hit the earth for instance.

[layman]

Amazing ... looks very small as moons go.

[Tennessee_Bob]

It took a minute for what it looked like to come to the surface. It looks like a wasps nest.

I don't think we need to go to Saturn.

[jennyp]

Electrons orbit the nucleus the way the planets orbit the sun. God's construction is simply yet complex.

Actually, no they don't. Electrons whizz around the nucleus in clouds of probability distributions, which can get quite complex as the number of electrons increases.

Eh, if you want to attribute that to God, then fine. They are pretty cool.

[Crazieman]

It orbits Saturn, and the outermost "large" moon.

[43north]

Isn't it amazing the amount of similarities there are in nature? Especially moving from the micro to the macro.

Just another example of intelligent design.

[jennyp]

Here's a better page which shows more electron orbitals.

[LibWhacker]

Looks like a dirty sponge to me.