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that imge looks likt the planet is covered in bitumin/coal. Could it be some kind of alien way to regulate the tempreture inside iapetus?
Originally posted by wildespace
From the 2004 flyby, here's a mosaic of true-colour (RGB) images, created from raw images at saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...
Full-size image: www.pictureshack.us...
Enigmatic place!
Also some great images and info here: solarsystem.nasa.gov...
Looks like there's a wealth of amazing images from the September 10, 2007 flyby to explore.edit on 8-9-2013 by wildespace because: (no reason given)
It's Iapetus' weird equatorial ridge of mountains, however, that has had scientists scratching their heads. Now, with the help of 3-D maps composed from Cassini data, researchers think they have the most likely cause of the mountains pinned down.
Typically, mountains on Earth are formed as a side effect of plate tectonics and volcanic activity. Alas, Iapetus appears to have neither and, besides, the 6 mile-high mountains are too steep to be explained away by conventional mountain-forming mechanisms. So how did the mountains get there?
The researchers reckon the material that formed the Iapetian mountains have "exogenic" origin. In other words, they came from space.