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PIA05411: Saturn's Yin-Yang Moon
 Target Name:  Iapetus
 Is a satellite of:  Saturn
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  ISS - Narrow Angle
 Product Size:  640 x 640 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  CICLOPS/Space Science Institute
 Primary Data Set:  Cassini
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA05411.tif (44.96 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA05411.jpg (5.784 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

This Cassini image hints at the split personality of Saturn's 1,436 kilometer (892 mile)-wide moon Iapetus. The Voyager spacecraft first imaged this curious yin-yang moon, with its light and dark hemispheres. The dark hemisphere is the side of Iapetus that leads in its orbit. In this view, both light and dark areas are visible.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft's narrow angle camera on May 23, 2004, from a distance of 20.2 million kilometers (12.5 million miles) from Iapetus. The image scale is 121 kilometers (75 miles) per pixel. The image was magnified to aid visibility.

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 the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Image Addition Date:
2004-06-22