NASA-International Space Station

New views of Saturn's moon Iapetus go with papers that detail how reddish dust swept up on the moon's orbit around Saturn and migrating ice can explicate the bizarre, yin-yang-patterned surface.

The papers, led by Cassini scientists Tilmann Denk and John Spencer, appeared online in the magazine Science on Dec. 10, 2009.

The new image in the left-hand panel of PIA11690 shows the most nearly absolute view to date of Iapetus' charcoal-dark leading hemisphere. The right-hand panel, which had been released formerly, shows the trailing hemisphere, where wide swaths are covered by bright ice. The new three-panel image PIA11689 uses false-color views in increasing levels of contrast to reveal the reddish dust that overlays the bright-dark pattern. Minimal improvement was applied to the left panel, with increasing contrast added to the middle and right-hand images.