Astronomy Picture of the Day - powered by LUNEXIT.IT

In today's APOD, we want to offer you a quite unusually-looking Surface Feature that was caught by the NASA - Cassini Spacecraft while the Orbiter was imaging the Southern Latitudes of the Saturnian "tumbling" moon Hyperion. As you can see (it is also indicated by a red arrow), lost in a "Sea of Craters" and "Pits" (and where almost all of the visible Surface Features show a round - or oval - shape), there is one (we believe, as IPF) Secondary Crater that appears to be triangular in shape, and with two of its walls (clearly visible since their tops are very well illuminated by the Sun) that draw an almost perfect 90° angle.

Of course this Surface Feature is NOT an artificial Surface Feature and we DO NOT believe that it constitutes a Surface Anomaly; it is just a (we repeat, in our opinion Secondary) Impact Crater with a really bizarre-looking shape.

We wanted to underline this last (but not least...) aspect of our (however curious) finding, because we believe, as IPF, that there are countless unbelievable - and still unexplainable - things worth to study in our Solar System, but NOT ALL OF THEM are actual "Anomalies", like a few pseudo-researchers (either in Europe, as well as overseas) want make the General Public to believe.

The truth is that, sometimes, a strange-looking Surface Feature is nothing else but a trick of light or, in fact, a bizarre "construction" made by Mother Nature: nothing else and nothing more. Try also to remember, please, that if we decided to call "Anomalies" or "Possible Artifacts" (like some "associations" actually do) each and every Surface Feature that appears strange-looking or that is a little more difficult than the usual to explain by using our Science and Knowledge, we would just disgrace the VERY hard work that comes, almost every day of the year, from our own Researchers, as well as from any intellectually honest and competent Researcher that operates in the field of the Planetary Sciences. In other words, we would certainly NOT make a favour to Science, Divulgation and, in the end, to ourselves.

All the illuminated Terrain seen here is (mostly) located in the Southern Hemisphere of Hyperion (which is approx. 270 Km - such as about 168 miles - across). The South Pole of Hyperion is near the bottom of the image and the frame was taken in Visible Light with the NASA - Cassini Spacecraft narrow-angle camera on November 28, 2010. The view was obtained at a distance of approx. 80.000 Km (about 50.000 miles) from Hyperion and at a Sun-Hyperion-Spacecraft, or Phase, Angle of 98°. Image scale is roughly 476 meters (1562 feet) per pixel.

This frame has been colorized in Absolute Natural Colors (such as the colors that a human eye would actually perceive if someone were onboard the NASA - Cassini Spacecraft and then looked outside, towards the Saturnian moon Hyperion), by using an original technique created - and, in time, dramatically improved - by the Lunar Explorer Italia Team.