Suggested Searches

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.

See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.

Saturn's Hyperion in Natural Color

Explanation: What lies at the bottom of Hyperion 's strange craters? To help find out, the robot Cassini spacecraft that once orbited Saturn swooped past the sponge-textured moon in 2005 and 2010 and took images of unprecedented detail. A six-image mosaic from the 2005 pass, featured here in natural color, shows a remarkable world strewn with strange craters and an odd sponge-like surface . At the bottom of most craters lies some type of unknown dark reddish material . This material appears similar to that covering part of another of Saturn's moons, Iapetus , and might sink into the ice moon as it better absorbs warming sunlight . Hyperion is about 250 kilometers across, rotates chaotically , and has a density so low that it likely houses a vast system of caverns inside.

Date May 14, 2018
Credit Image Credit & License: NASA / JPL / SSI ; Composition: Gordan Ugarkovic
Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.