Saturn’s Moon Iapetus has a unique feature which was, until recently, ... They’re also the only such mountains anywhere on Iapetus’ surface (reaching as high as 63,000 feet tall).

Iapetus, a Saturn moon with jumbled colors, shows its strange surface shapes in a new view from the Cassini mission, which is currently exploring the gas giant. Iapetus, ...

Seen from the surface of Iapetus, Saturn looms about four times larger than a full Moon in Earth’s sky. Ever since its discovery by Cassini in 1671, something seemed strange about Iapetus.

Saturn's distinctive moon Iapetus (eye-APP-eh-tuss) is cryogenically frozen in the equivalent of its teenage years. ... Furthermore, the surface area of the cold moon was now smaller.

The black-and-white surface of Saturn’s moon Iapetus has puzzled scientists for centuries. Now, astronomers can explain how the bright white Iapetian surface is darkened.

How Saturn's moon Iapetus got its ridge Date: December 13, 2010 Source: Washington University in St. Louis Summary: Two scientists propose an explanation for the bizarre ridge belting Saturn's ...

Their simulations showed that if Iapetus had a disk of material, that disk as it fell to the moon’s surface could have created the mountain range. What created the disk, though, is yet another ...

Because Iapetus is mostly ice, the researchers also examined how heat from the impact might affect the surface. They found that, even for the largest impactors, temperatures would be localized to ...

Iapetus, a moon of Saturn, has baffled astronomers since the early days of telescopic observation. It seemed to vanish and reappear without explanation, earning it a mythical status in early ...

Whether the simple ice melt model holds for long-runout landslides on other worlds, the presence of such avalanches on Iapetus adds to the unique character of the moon. Nature Geoscience , 2012 ...

Saturn's two-faced moon Iapetus reaches its greatest western elongation today. At western elongation, the moon's lighter hemisphere is turned toward Earth, making it brightest and easiest to view ...