Approaching Iapetus - what makes it two-faced?

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vogon13

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The perfectly symmetrical (less subsequent crater damage) attendent ridges to the main equatorial ridge structure literally scream external origin.<br /><br />An internal geophysical process of Iapetus would be hard pressed to generate a dead straight ridge aligned within a couple degrees of the equator, let alone 2 identical diverging structures, perfectly symmetrical.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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3488

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I see your point. I can see where you have the theory of a collapsed ring, causing the mountain chain. I am not sure, I still think it was an internal process.<br /><br />If the equatorial ridge is a collapsed ring, would it be made of very loose material, i.e very little structural strength? <br /><br />Would it have the consistency of loosely bound gravel & sand? Just a thought. <br /><br />Could such a structure exist for so long whilst Iapetus is hit by comets & asteroids, causing Iapetusquakes? <br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>
 
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vogon13

Guest
The impact velocity of the ring material was calculated out at 1540 km/hr.<br /><br />This is not a large number actually. Just somewhat supersonic in earth's atmosphere.<br /><br />Taking chunks of water ice at maybe -300 degrees F and smacking them together at this speed would certainly pulverize the chunks, but I am thinking the vaporization is going to be slight.<br /><br />I watched some 0 degree F ice cubes fired pneumatically at ~600 km/hr impact some composite materials recently, I saw them pulverize, but I could not discern any liquid.<br /><br /><br />A pile of chipped ice and snow laying around for 4 billion years will probably homogenize pretty tightly. I am citing the apparent slopes of the ridge as being near the angle of repose expected for an accumulation of granular material.<br /><br />I would expect an internally extruded material to make something with a much shallow angled pile. Look at a scale cutaway drawing of the Hawaiian Islands, the angle is vastly shallower.<br /><br />Try an experiment:<br /><br /><br />Get a Bic pen.<br /><br />Remove the ink cartridge.<br /><br />Get 1000 telephone books.<br /><br />Chew the phone books into spit wads, and fire them all through the Bic pen body, all in exactly the same direction.<br /><br /><br />I predict you will form a rather large (disgusting) pile of spit wads roughly 25 ft from you.<br /><br />If you take care to always shoot them in the exact same direction, the pile will start growing towards you until the pile itself blockes the end of your Bic pen. The resulting pile of spit wads will closely resemble the Iapetan ridge structure.<br /><br /><br />{I did this example before with cannonballs, but they seejmed a rather violent way to do the experiment}<br /><br /><br /><br />{btw: It's a thought experiment}<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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3488

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I like your thought experiment.<br /><br />So it would have been a relatively slow ring collapse then. The granules would have stuck & froze together.<br /><br />I see your point about the slope. If it was internally formed, the slopes would be shallower & wider like the shield volcanoes of Hawaii & the Tharsis volcanoes on Mars.<br /><br />Iapetus is just getting weirder & weirder. Do you think that the equatorial ridge extends to the highly reflective trailing hemisphere? <br /><br />If the ridge is a collapsed ring, in theory it should only be on the leading hemisphere, if my reasoning is correct.<br /><br />Also would it mean that Iapetus formed much closer in towards Saturn, than drifted outwards over time (like our own moon is moving away from Earth)?<br /><br />I think that we must convince NASA to reduce the encounter distance to about 200 KM in August 2007.<br /><br />The encounter will be a slow one, as both Cassini & Iapetus at the time will be travelling at very nearly the same speed, (unlike the fast July 2005 encounter with Enceladus which resulted in some slightly blurred images at closest approach). <br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>
 
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vogon13

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I think the ridge location would have been keyed to the existing highest elevation along the ground track along the equator.<br /><br />I feel that the remoteness of Iapetus (since formation) is key to the longevity of the feature, allowing us to examine it in this epoch.<br /><br />Iapetus would have been tidally braked slowest of all major Saturnian satellites. Additionally, considering the large volume of space and the low orbital velocity, Iapetus would have been a very leisurely accreted satellite. Since the formation of Iapetus was so slow, the formation heat would have had longer to dissipate and would have resulted in a crust of sufficient rigidity to sustain the accumulating ridge structure.<br /><br />It also explains the 'lumpy' profile of Iapetus. The 'cat scratch' features may record the incoming direction of the adjacent landside basin impactor. This would be another feature apparently unique to Iapetus, and made visible across time for us due to the enormous early rigidity of the Iapetan crust.<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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vogon13

Guest
A presumably minimum time to deposit a ring system ( 1 cubic meter per second) would be ~350 years. The actual deposition time could be much longer.<br /><br />Depends on the speed of the 'bump' process that redistributes angular momentum across the ring feature and perhaps residual drag effects from the solar wind and other sources.<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
3

3488

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Also the fact that the surface gravity of Iapetus is about 1/50th or 2% that of Earth would help. The crust of Iapetus must be enormously thick.<br /><br />I think the article below is interesting:<br /><br />A spectacular landslide within the low-brightness region of Iapetus's surface known as Cassini Regio is visible in this image from Cassini. Iapetus is one of the moons of Saturn. <br /><br />The landslide material appears to have collapsed from a scarp 15 kilometers high (9 miles) that forms the rim of an ancient 600 kilometer (375 mile) impact basin. Unconsolidated rubble from the landslide extends halfway across a conspicuous, 120-kilometer diameter (75-mile) flat-floored impact crater that lies just inside the basin scarp. <br /><br />Landslides are common geological phenomena on many planetary bodies, including Earth and Mars. The appearance of this landslide on an icy satellite with low-brightness cratered terrain is reminiscent of landslide features that were observed during NASA's Galileo mission on the Jovian satellite Callisto. The fact that the Iapetus landslide traveled many kilometers from the basin scarp could indicate that the surface material is very fine-grained, and perhaps was fluffed by mechanical forces that allowed the landslide debris to flow extended distances. <br /><br />In this view, north is to the left of the picture and solar illumination is from the bottom of the frame. The image was obtained in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Dec. 31, 2004, at a distance of about 123,400 kilometers (76,677 miles) from Iapetus and at a Sun-Iapetus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 78 degrees. Resolution achieved in the original image was 740 meters (2,428 feet) per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced and magnified by a factor of two to aid visibility. <br /><br />The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>
 
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vogon13

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{posted this in Free Space last night, it occurs to me it needs to be copied here to maintain a common focus for the ridge speculations, also to see if I can copy things here with the 'right click' thingy}<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />This is one of my 'apparently analogous' type conclusions. <br /><br />Having only the barest grasp of what's up with the short longevity of stuff in low lunar circular orbit, it occurs to me that what ever it is that causes it would be active in the Pluto/ Charon system too. The effect is noted at Venus too, (Venus being a satellite of the sun in this case) having snuffed PVO and Magellan and probably some Soviet era orbiters too. <br /><br />I have read somewhere (never find it again in my chaotic library) that (IIRC) the gravity gradient (if you will) of the primary effects objects in orbit about the secondary by pumping up their orbital eccentricity. Obviously, if you are in a low circular orbit, bumping up the eccentricity generally is not a good thing. <br /><br />You smack the surface in short order. (or in the case of Venus, you zorch in the atmosphere) <br /><br /><br />Which is what happened to the two Apollo sub-satellites, and would happen to any group of particles orbiting Charon attempting to organize themselves into a ring system. <br /><br /><br />It also gives a little more gravitas to my speculations regarding Iapetus, it being so isolated, these effects of Saturn upon debris in the Iapetan Roche limit are small enough as to permit the ring system to form. <br /><br /><br />A further conclusion of this would be that a certain percentage of KBOs, may have equatorial ridge systems like Iapetus, they merely need to have experienced a similar oblique collision, have a size sufficient to have sphericized itself, and be a lone body comfortably far from anything else. <br /><br />Perhaps 1 to 5 % of the appropriate KBO's will have an Iapetan style equatorial ridge sys <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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jmilsom

Guest
IMPORTANT<br /><br />Vogon13, is your real name Wing-Huen Ip? If not you have been plagiarized!!!!!<br /><br />In this week's New Scientist, the following article appeared:<br /><br /><b>Mountains that fell from the sky</b><br /><br />Like planet like moon. Saturn's moon Iapetus could once have had its own ring system, and it could explain the bizarre ridge that girdles this moon......<br /><br />...Wing-Huen Ip of the National Central University in Taiwan <i>now</i> has an alternative idea: that the ridge could have come from outside the moon. The young Iapetus might have had rings of debris left over from its formation - a miniature version of the spectacular ring system arounf its parent planet. In this theory the isolation of Iapetus is an advantage, as Saturn's gravity would not easily disrupt the ring. Instead the ring would gradually contract, ending up piled high on the moon's surface....... etc<br /><br /><i>Source: New Scientist, Vol 191, No. 2568, p20</i><br /><br />These ideas were by proposed by Vogon13 and others 18 months ago on SDC. You should write to New Scientist (Letters) and point this out! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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vogon13

Guest
Bobvanx was the first to suggest an emplaced ring on the Iapetan surface, as I recall.<br /><br />I would not use the word plagiarize, the origin of the ridge structure is self evident in my view. That some other folks have trouble with the concept doesn't matter much to me at all. An independent researcher coming up with a similar idea is a nice way to confirm after all.<br /><br />The people in the "woo-woo" orbits never get to experience that.<br /><br /><br /> {I am having internet problems tonight, I will post more later if I can get the darn thing to work } <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
J

jmilsom

Guest
Yes. I post this in a light-hearted manner. I found myself quite irked though by the following line in the article:<br /><br /><font color="yellow">....<i>now</i> has an alternative idea</font><br /><br />You note I emphasise the word 'now'. The way it is written, it implies 'wow, someone has just thought of this!'<br /><br />Anyway, kudos to yourself and all the SDC people that worked through the idea on this great thread. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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3488

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Hi all,<br /><br />I am just being thick & being a right muppet or what?<br /><br />I am confused.<br /><br />Does this suggest that either:<br /><br />1). Iapetus had its own mini ring system, independent from Saturn's that collapsed onto Iapetus creating the equatorial mountain belt? <br /><br />Or,<br /><br />2). Saturn once had a ring that occupied the same orbit as Iapetus, & this ring ended up on Iapetus as the equatorial mountain belt???<br /><br />It would seem strange that the other moderately large moons like Tethys & Dione, as well as the large moon Rhea, do not have a similar feature.<br /><br />Titan is understandable by having geological activity & weathering.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>
 
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vogon13

Guest
Iapetus had a nice little ring system of it's own.<br /><br />Probably as a result of a grazing impact not unlike the ones that spawned Charon and earth's moon. (there is a big elongated crater in the southern hemisphere of Iapetus on the eastern border of Casinni Regio, btw)<br /><br />Natural forces caused the orbits of the individual ring particles to decay over time, and the ring system wound up in a big pile on the surface of Iapetus. The physical location of the emplaced materials was keyed to the highest existing spot along the Iapetan equator. Towards the end of the process, Iapetus either suffered a small shift in it's spin axis as a result of a large impact, or the outer portion of the ring system had some inclined elements. As a consequence of this, the two diverging attendant ridges formed. They are perfectly matched (not counting subsequent random cratering damage) in length, height, degree of slope, diverging angle to the equator, and describe complimentary segments of great circle paths around Iapetus. The attendent ridges absolutely rule out internal geological causation for the ridge system.<br /><br />The symmetrical diverging attendant ridges formed as the exsiting high end of the ridge penetrated the (relatively) tilted remainder of the ring system twice per Iapetan rotation. This 'keys' the location of the attendent ridges to a fixed location along the equator.<br /><br /><br />There are a variety of reasons why we don't see this type of feature on other moons discussed elsewhere in this thread.<br /><br />As it turns out, neither Pluto or Charon will have a feature like this. The Plutonian atmosphere and the mutual tidal effects of Pluto and Charon rule out a ring system for either object.<br /><br />If sufficient numbers of spherical, non-mooned KBOs exist, they are expected to have features like this about ~~~5% of the time.<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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3488

Guest
Hi Vogon 13,<br /><br />Thanks for that.<br /><br />I did suspect this, given the earlier comments, but was not sure.<br /><br />It would be something to see an artists impression of Iapetus with its own rings, based on what we already know (how wide was the 'ring system').<br /><br />I know the crater you mean. I can see that a glancing blow created it, leaving an unusual appearance. At higher resolution, I expect there to be an interesting 'fan shaped' ejecta blanket.<br /><br />Mikeemmert, may also be able to throw some light on this, as he seems to have a great deal of knowledge on orbital mechanics & resonances. Perhaps he could throw some light on the original orbit of Iapetus around Saturn.<br /><br />I know he has an interesting theory about Titan & I agree with him, 100% on it. This would explain the creation of the ring system around Iapetus nicely as Titan literallly re-arranged the moons of Saturn, causing large impacts in the process.<br /><br />I think this subject will live on. Roll on the next Iapetus encounter with the Cassini spacecraft.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>
 
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vogon13

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I commented on another website that the visual appearance of the Iapetan ring system would not have been as striking as Saturn's. The Iapetan system would not have had the equivalent of the Saturnian D area, and the ring system would have appear to descend far closer to the surface. The ring originally would probably have extended up to the top of the Iapetan Roche limit, so in that regard, Saturn like.<br /><br />Also, due to no proximate resonance producing objects, I don't expect the Iapetan rings to have had the extensive 'grooving' Saturn's do.<br /><br />I also note that the ring sytem after an initial high rate of emplacement, would have had a fairly long period of emplacement at a lower, but near constant rate. It would have been extremely interesting to watch the system progress over time.<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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3488

Guest
Even so, it would have still been quite wide at some point in relation to the diameter of Iapetus & guite a sight too (a cratered round object surronded by a ring, very different to the ringed gas giants). I see what you mean about it being just one ring, unless the orbit of Iapetus was very different (orbited much closer in to Saturn).<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>
 
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vogon13

Guest
Ring formation pretty much requires Iapetus to be fairly remote at the time it forms. We need a minimal perturbation envrionment for the original chaotic debris cloud to have time to collapse to the Laplacian plane. (note that a low level of perturbations will not affect the evolution of the structure too much, it would just step up the emplacement rate slightly by increasing the dynamical ring spreading process) Iapetus has not moved appreciably closer to or further from Saturn since it accreted. <br /><br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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vogon13

Guest
In theory, it may be possible someday to put some dates on aspects of this amazing feature.<br /><br />At the time of the original grazing impact, quite a bit of debris blown out of the crater would not have achieved orbit. It would have arced across the Iapetan surface and impacted, creating secondary craters. (this effect has been noted on the earth's moon). Due to the grazing nature of the impact, I presume the 'spray' of ejecta would have been mostly in one direction and would have continued around Iapetus for a great distance.<br /><br />During the time the materials are traveling, Iapetus would have continued to rotate on it's axis at whatever rate it happened to be turning at at the time. Today, ~80 days for one rev. Therefore, in the, let's say 1 1/2 hours it would take for debris to come down 180 degrees around Iapetus, Iapetus would have turned very little. Now in the distant past, Iapetus is believed to have rotated faster prior to tide lock with Saturn. If Iapetus was rotating in 15 hours at the time of impact, Iapetus would have rotated 36 degrees. This will 'skew' the ejecta field from the impact. Also, debris in shallow descending trajectories will tend to make elongated secondary craters. They will 'point' back to the parent crater if close to it, but as one goes further away, the long axes will be skewed by this effect.<br /><br />Perhaps to discern the appropriate subset of Iapetan craters, computerized image analysis will be required to sort out the correct subset of Iapetan craters we are interested in.<br /><br />By checking out the degree of skewing per distance of the secondaries of the primaries, we will have an accurate (very accurate for the shorter periods possible, less so for the longer ones near tide lock) idea of the rotation period of Iapetus at the time the ring system formed.<br /><br />Additionally, should an accurate time scale be derived for how long it took Iapetus to tide lock to Saturn, then we will have a fairly accurate w <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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jmilsom

Guest
There was an interesting reference to an article in <i>Science</i> (vol315, p815) in this weeks New Scientist.<br /><br />This paper proposes that sandblasting is the key to the sparkling complexion of Saturn's moons. Anne Verbiscer and colleagues at the University of Virginia have suggested that Enceladus' eruptions have been giving its neighbours a makeover by bombarding them with ice crystals. These apparenlty churn up the surface creating a fluffy layer with higher reflectivity. <br /><br />I realise Iapetus is much further away. But we have focussed on what has darkened the leading face, perhaps it lightened from the opposite direction due to a particularly large ice ejection event from another part of the system. Thoughts? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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vogon13

Guest
I am quite convinced we are looking at a dark stain on a light surface. <br /><br />Definitive observations from Cassini are expected this September. Detailed appearance of the 'Voyager Mountains' should provide the needed clarification<br /><br />It seems the 'leading ' ideas for Iapetus' two toned surface generate differing predictions as to what we might see in the upcoming pictures. Dark dust on white, white eruptive material on dark, and a gaseous darkening solar activated discolorant all seem to predict differing appearances of the equatorial white peaks noted off the west end of the main equatorial ridge structure.<br /><br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
C

chesh

Guest
Not so much sandblasting as painting the surfaces with ice crystals. Enceladus has been 'caught in the act' of emitting 100's of cu. m. of ice and presumable has an internal, unstable heat source which causes the emissions of the ice crystals, which may also be creating the large E ring in which the inner moons move.<br /><br />A large impact on any of these moons by whatever origin, if we visualize it can also release one great amount of materials, which in the case of Enceladus would be a lot of water ice. In other moon darker, more organic or dusty particles would be released thus causing a heavy, very short term 'burst" dusting or 'painting' of Iapetus. This is hypothetical and has not been observed, but is consistent with the data. Further observations will likely refine or disconfirm the hypothesis. The system is so complex, that it's peculiar. <br /><br />It might be guessed a massive comet was broken up on approaching in slow orbit and created the rings due to an unlikely set of conditions. How old the rings are, & if they are steadily being replenished or in fact disappearing would have great bearing on this issue.<br /><br />The ring around the equator is still a problem, but probably came when the moon interacted with thin rings of icy particles of unknown origin. That would create a discrete equatorial, raised ring, and simultaneously be narrow, plus removing the evidence of its origin.<br /><br />Or it could be a tectonic process where part of the equatorial crust shifted and created the long, fault line, scarp like effect.<br /><br />For some reason no one has explained successfully why Saturn alone of all the Jovian planets has multiple, complex rings, while Jove, Neptune and Uranus have very little, hard to see minimal rings.<br /><br />the origin & composition of the moons of Saturn might explain the rings.<br /><br />These are peculiar natural phenomena which remain of mysterious origins.
 
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vogon13

Guest
Magnetospheric effects from Saturn may contain Enceladosian materials to the realm of the smaller inner satellites and simultaneously facilitate the transfer of the gaseous darkening agent from Titan to Hyperion and Iapetus.<br /><br />{Enceladus is always well within the magnetosphere, Titan is randomly in and out of it, providing an opprotunity for emanations to be transported via magnetotail to outer satellites. And recall, the magenetotail is fixed in space (anti-sunward) to Saturn and Iapetus is tide locked to Saturn, thus explaining the longitudinal extent of Cassini Regio. Additionally, Hyperion, being in a 'tumble' about Saturn, can develop dark spots in virtually all of it's crater floors, via the same gaseous darkening agent.}<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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jmilsom

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Yes. I just thought I'd post it as it was such a wildly different idea to what we were discussing above. Another possibility in a sea of many possibilities. Hopefully the September observations will trigger a flood of new discussion. <br /><br />Probes to Titan, Europa, Io, Enceldaus? - I dream of a little rover on Iapetus <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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3488

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Hopefully, I may be able to get the encounter distance reduced with Iapetus in September. I have already made enquiries & it is possible without upsetting the mission schedule.<br /><br />I think a very close pass will show whether or not Iapetus is totally geologically inctive, give some idea about the thickness of the dark covering & maybe see that curious equatorial mountain belt in high resolution. Should determine once & for all if the mountain belt is a collapsed Iapetan ring.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>
 
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jmilsom

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That would be fantastic Andrew. We'd all be in your debt. Few moons have invoked as much discussion on these boards as intriguing Iapetus! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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