Posted on 03/09/2006 2:26:03 PM PST by AZRepublican
A masterpiece of deep time and wrenching gravity, the tortured surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus and its fascinating ongoing geologic activity tell the story of the ancient and present struggles of one tiny world. This is a story that is recounted by imaging scientists in a paper published in the journal Science on March 10, 2006.
It makes a great wallpaper. This is one of the best moon photographs I have ever seen. Thank you for showing it.
And their strange half-brother. :)
Hoagland may (or may not) be a raving nut-ball, but Iapetus sure does seem just a little odd...
My thought was tectonic plates or such. Like a bigfracturedice flow.
Add me to your list. I love astronomy!
I noticed the same thing. That means that the area free of large cratering has been resurfaced since the heavy-bombardment era. Same as Europa.
What's with the wall on Ipateus?
enucleate my eyes if I know, pard.
Very informative! Thank you.
> I would think that the craters near the edge would be elongated rather than perfectly round.
Nope. It's not intuitively obvious, but craters are almost *never* anythign but basically circular, no matter what the angle of impact was. You can demo this at home... get a big pan, fill it with flour, and drop small rocks into it. You'll get circular craters. Now *toss* them in at weird angles. You'll still get round craters. On the moon, there are are a few strings of craters formed from *extremely* shallow impacts... basically, the rock skipped over the surface. Each individual crater is round.
> What's with the wall on Ipateus?
Nobody knows. The geologists are doing the happy-dance of discovery... something they can't explain. OBOY!
Good point. It sure is beautiful to look at. Also, I enjoying the posts above that have ventured onto other topics.
I think the civilization in the Southern hemisphere was trying to keep out the barbarians living in the Northern hemisphere.
Thats ridiculous. Her legs don't look anywhere that good, or so I've heard.
Oh good. My tax dollars spent to launch a satellite, just to send 21 photos back to make an image of a planet's moon. Of course someone can explain to me what benefit I'm getting out of this. I think next time NASA wants to waste my money on one of these boondoggles, I'd just rather have my tax money for me and my family to decide how to spend. Let private industry do this if they see an economical benefit to it. Or not. Either way, the national government needs to get out of the business of launching space junk.
Dang it! It is a death star!
;^)
Europa is a lot closer and it too has a liquid water ocean beneath the surface
Heavily pocked in the Northern Hemisphere. Must be the results of the gravitional effects of Saturn on incoming objects.
And if you look at part 6 you will see a comparison of the Death Star, Iapetus, and an archaeological artifact that looks similar to them. (photos about halfway down the page)
http://www.enterprisemission.com/moon6.htm
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