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Saturn's Moon Phoebe
The Cassini spacecraft captured a series of high resolution images of the small moon Phoebe. This moon of Saturn shows an unusual variation in brightness over its surface due to the existence on some crater slopes and floors of bright material -- thought to contain ice -- on what is otherwise one of the darkest known bodies in the solar system. Bright streaks on the rim of the large crater in the North (up in this image) may have been revealed by the collapse of overlying darker material from the crater wall. The large crater below right-of-center shows evidence of layered deposits of alternating bright and dark material. Phoebe's surface shows many large- and small-scale craters. The emerging view of Phoebe is that it might have been part of an ancestral population of icy, comet-like bodies, some of which now reside in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune. The images were taken with the narrow-angle camera at distances ranging from 15,974 kilometers (9,926 miles) to 12,422 kilometers (7,719 miles). The Cassini spacecraft left Earth in 1997 and entered Saturn's orbit in July 2005. Scientists hope to keep Cassini orbiting Saturn for at least four years. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute Download Wallpaper: 800 x 600 | 1024 x 768 Return to galleries: Earth | Solar System | Stars & Galaxies | Spaceflight & Spacecraft
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