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>