New Dione images

New Dione Images are online at the JPL raw images on their Cassini site, just search for Dione. Some of the newest images are still not fully ingested (from a 2x2 full-color mosaic), so dig in a page or two. The link above takes you to a full disk image of Dione. The view shows the south polar region, Cassandra (the ray crater), and the region south of Padua Linea (bottom left) and Palantine Linea (right, just sunward of the terminator). Here you can see incredible relief in Palantine and albedo in Padua (as well as the UV dark material). What surprised me is the 350-km wide basin at upper left (size is just a guesstimate, don't quote me on that). So Dione has a giant impact basin like Tethys near the south pole. Also note the high mountain along the limb near the basin. Finally, observe how smooth Dione is, between craters.

Update: 06/13/05: Wow, I am getting really good at this. The basin is 350 km across.