APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Saturn's Hyperion: A Moon with Odd Craters
Explanation: What lies at the bottom of Hyperion 's strange craters? Nobody's sure . To help find out, the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn swooped past the sponge-textured moon in 2005 and 2010 and took images of unprecedented detail. An image from the 2005 pass, shown above in false color, shows a remarkable world strewn with strange craters and a generally odd surface . The slight differences in color likely show differences in surface composition. At the bottom of most craters lies some type of unknown dark material . Inspection of the image shows bright features indicating that the dark material might be only tens of meters thick in some places. Hyperion is about 250 kilometers across, rotates chaotically , and has a density so low that it might house a vast system of caverns inside.
| Date | June 30, 2013 |
|---|---|
| Credit | Image Credit & Copyright: Cassini Imaging Team , SSI , JPL , ESA , NASA |
| Authors & editors: | Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) |
| A service of: |
ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. |




