In the photo: The strange ridge of Iapetus.
On the satellites of Saturn, colored spots and stripes of unknown nature, and perhaps of unknown purpose, have been identified.
According to Space, a new mysterious feature has been revealed on the satellites of Saturn - the presence of a characteristic and uniform color "camouflage".
An analysis of the images of Saturn's moons obtained by the Cassini station made it possible to establish that five of them - the large satellites closest to the planet - have a characteristic, uniform, but difficult to explain coloring. We are talking about the moons Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dion and Rhea.
The color pattern distinguishes well on synthesized images, which represent the signal difference (for each of the pixels) in the infrared and ultraviolet channels. On all these satellites (except for Mimas) the spots are located in their "tail" part.
The satellites are turned to Saturn with one side, and one of the hemispheres is always the leading, or "nasal" (ie, oriented along the orbital motion), and the opposite is the slave, or "tail".
The brightness of the color spot is maximum in the center of the trailing hemisphere. A similar color formation - though not so pronounced - is also present on the leading hemisphere symmetrically to the first.
It is suggested that the coloring is related to the effect of either dust or ions and high-energy particles. However, everything is complicated by the symmetry of the "camouflage" - the mechanism of action on both hemispheres is unclear.
However, the strangeness is not limited to spots - the satellites also have a coloring in the form of clearly defined stripes.
Promotional video:
Photos from Iapetus.
The first object of this kind was detected by the Voyager spacecraft 30 years ago - it is a lenticular stripe running across the nasal hemisphere of Tethys. It has a "blue" color - high brightness in the ultraviolet and low - in the infrared range.
Then exactly the same strip about 175 km wide was found on Mimas. The culmination was the discovery of an extremely thin (several kilometers wide) and clearly visible in the ultraviolet band of discrete "spots" at the very equator of Rhea.
Probably, in this list of riddles it is necessary to mention the extremely unusual phenomenon of Iapetus, "black and white", as if splashed with mud, Iapetus. On the latter, a strange equatorial ridge was also discovered, which has no analogues.