Cassini meets Phoebe

[Brian G Turner]

The Cassini spacecraft, which is en route to Saturn, has made a close pass of the planet's mysterious moon Phoebe. The US-European spacecraft made its closest approach to the moon on Friday at 2156 BST at a distance of 2,078km.

Images show a scarred moon pounded by massive impacts that tossed building-sized rocks out on to its surface.

The pictures have already revealed exciting clues to Phoebe's history, including alternating layers of bright and dark material around its craters.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3798485.stm

 

[littlemissattitude]

That is an incredibly cool photo. I always love it when we get pictures confirming that places other than Earth are actual places and not just pinpoints of light in the sky. It's even cooler when it's a place like this, which can't even be seen from Earth without a telescope.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I liked that photo too.

There were others - showing Phoebe as a moon - the typical rounded picture - but because this one showed a sense of scale and detail, I had to post it up.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Here's an interesting detail: Phoebe may be the remnant of an early stage of the Solar System, when planetisimals composed of ice, rock and carbon-containing compounds coalesced to form the outer giant planets.

More here: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/cassini-04zc.html