Wednesday, August 24, 2005

New Tethys Image: With the Band


CICLOPS has released this view of Tethys taken on July 10 from a distance of 1.8 million kilometers (for a resolution of 11 km/pixel). This image shows Odysseus crater near the terminator at upper left as well as the crater Melanthus at lower left. One striking feature noted numerous times here is the dark band on Tethys that runs from west to east from southwestern Odysseus basin to Ithaca Chasma. The origin of this feature is currently unknown. Overall, the albedo of this region of Tethys looks stratified, with brighter material in the southern hemisphere, the dark stripe, and then intermediate albedo material in the north, though this could just be a lighting effect.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You can get that look on an Easter Egg by dipping just the very top in a weak soap solution before plunging the egg halfway into a dye solution.

I'm not aware of any dipping solutions in the solar system, but I can't escape the notion the banding is related to Saturn's rings - for example, rotating while slicing halfway through a light and slightly darker ring.

8/25/2005 06:42:00 AM  

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