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Pictures of Dione, Iapetus and Enceladus
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Dione, Iapetus and Enceladus
Click on any picture to get a larger image of that picture.
Pictures of Dione
Picture of 4 very large impact craters on Dione - a moon of Saturn. The large crater at the top of the picture is less than 100 kilometers in diameter. The bright rays coming from the craters on the right are caused by material thrown from the impact craters at the time of the impact.
Picture of Dione taken by NASA's Voyager 1.
The bright patterns on the right-hand side might be ejecta (debris) from impact craters. Two impact craters have high central peaks.
Pictures of Enceladus
Picture of Enceladus by Voyager 2. Enceladus reflects around 90% of the sunlight it receives, because of its icy surface. The surface of Enceladus varies greatly. As can be seen on this photograph, some areas appear quite smooth, while others are very heavy cratered.
Pictures of Iapetus
Picture of Iapetus by Voyager 2. Iapetus has a heavily cratered icy terrain. There are bright and dark terrains on Iapetus, as can clearly be seen on this photograph. The bright area consists of dirty ice. The very dark area contains carbon on its surface. This is the best close-up picture of Iapetus NASA has at this moment - better pictures will become available only in 2004.
Lets see what you have learned from these pictures ...
- On which moons of Saturn can we not see anything because of a thick cloud cover?
- What causes the bright rays that seem to come from the impact craters?
- Which moon of Saturn is very highly reflective? What causes its highly reflective surface?
- Which moons of Saturn would you say looks like the planet Mercury?
- Name two of Saturn's moons. Describe these moon in two or three sentences.
- Which spacecrafts took some of these pictures?
- What is Saturn's largest moon called?
All images are courtesy NASA/JPL except where stated otherwise.
© Copyright 2001, 2002 - All Rights Reserved Worldwide
This page was last updated on: August 7, 2001
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