APOD Oct.03, 2005 Hyperion

[craterchains]

This remarkable photo from Cassini in the Saturn moon and ring system sparks great intrigue. Is it possible that some of the surface is covered by frozen gasses escaping from the cavernous interior spaces?

This is one of the most "bombarded" surfaces I have seen!

Norval

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap051003.html

[Alan]

It looks like a spent comet nucleus that was captured by Saturn. That would explain its chaotic orbit and dessicated appearance.

[Franco Sgueglia]

It' s very strange this picture to my eyes !

Colors distributions , textures , cavernous shapes are really
like to a generated 3D synthetic image.

I have generated , during my job life , a lot of similar objects
using digital FX . This have the same characteristics .

It's weird , I dont know what kind of elaborations was applyied to this
picture but for me is not real.

[ta152h0]

Somewhere out there in the solar system there exists an object with a chunk, the size of Hyperion, missing...just my guess

[Kid]

looks more like it was hit by a comet

there seems to be a hole in the middle for hyperion

[Empeda]

It's weird , I dont know what kind of elaborations was applyied to this
picture but for me is not real.

The moon has a reddish appearance in natural light - I believe for this image the red light has been reduced and the other wavelengths have been slightly amplified to show more surface fluctuations.

Certainly a very interesting object - captured comet I'd say ( along with millions of others).

Does look like it's been hit but something pretty big though - or is it subsidence?

[johnnyb]

it brings to mind a giant chunk of coral.

[orin stepanek]

As rough a this moon is; it has some very smooth areas. Looks like something polished off some of the surface,
Orin

[bassman]

As to the shape of most of the craters on the surface, have any of you ever thrown a rock into some soft surface , such as mud. It will make the same shape of a crater. Is it possible that the surface of Hyperion is or was at some time not solid and that an impact would have resulted in this type of wound? Ever see a movie of a pellet shot into a block of clay?

[Franco Sgueglia]

for my experiences it appear to close to a 3D artifact not to
the real shot.

[ruidh]

It looks like a spent comet nucleus that was captured by Saturn. That would explain its chaotic orbit and dessicated appearance.

And especially when they talk about the extremely low density. Hyperion "has a density so low that it might house a vast system of caverns inside."

I'm reminded of the unexpected result when the Japanese probe slammed into comet Temple 1. The picture sounds a lot like this description of Temple 1 all the way down to the scarp wall. http://planetary.org/blog/20050905.html#09071045

I'm thinking of a spongy material like the foam florists use for arrangements rather than an object with large voids.

[aichip]

Experimenting with pedestrian materials as well as cryogenics, I have seen similar things to these craters and I think I have a possible explanation for this very odd looking moon.

Imagine that it starts out as a mass of water ice and volatiles. Over the ages, it might undergo sublimation and recrystalization, leading the material to become very fluffy. It would be not far in structure from hoarfrost, and of very low density.

Now, some body, perhaps carbonaceous, impacts it and creates that large very obvious crater we see in the image. Darker carbonaceous material is scattered and much of it eventually rains back down on the surface. This could happen over an extended period of time as some of the material could well form a thin torus around Saturn and eventually be swept up. The rotation of Hyperion would bring it back all over the moon, not in one location.

Now you have a large, fluffy ice moon and it features this large impact crater, and it is covered here and there with the darker powdery material from the impact (or perhaps some other event). The key here is that the darker material will absorb a little heat. Not much, but over time it will be enough to vaporize some of the material beneath it. As the process proceeds, the material heads toward the center of mass of the moon and as each bowl-like drepression is formed, it concentrates the darker dust to the center of each bowl.

This explains the bowl shape of the craters- they are made by heat absorbing dust that slowly moves to the center of each bowl. They are radial from the center of the body- the dust falls downward to the center of mass, so the focus of each bowl is aimed that way. This gives it the strange sponge look and texture.

Now, if we could determine how much heat the dust absorbs from the Sun, we might be able to date when the impact occurred, assuming that the dark dust is from that event.

Theories? Agreements? Flames?

[Empeda]

I'm reminded of the unexpected result when the Japanese probe slammed into comet Temple 1

That was a NASA probe - Deep Impact. There is a Japanese probe (Hayabusa) currently hovering above the Ito-whotzit asteroid.

Like the previous idea - do you reckon this collision would ahve occured before or after capture by Saturn?

[BMAONE23]

I tend to agree with the idea of this being a captured comet. I am uncertain how to explain the dark material at the bottom of the unusual craters other than from an impact that spread pulverized material over the surface which then settled at the bottoms of the craters. I feel though that the unusual craters are caused by off gassing (e)vents from the (Comets) interior. This type of action might tend to cause conical craters rather than the round bottomed impact style crater.

[davidfortner]

As a geologist, my first impression of the picture before reading the text was "tektite". After reading about what the thing was, I think that's a pretty good guess. It's ejecta from a serious collision that cooled (rapidly) into a low-density glass-like substance as it passed through an atmosphere.

[ta152h0]

The blast, that the crater size indicates, would have obliterated the body was just the size of Hyperion as we see it. I just think eons ago a much bigger body was hit and fragmented into smaller pieces, one of them being Hyperion bearing the scar of the collision, and fortunate for us , observers of fine arts, turned out to be in orbit around Saturn. And it is possible that the Saturnian ring system is made up of the same material as Hyperion???
Hmmm that beer tastes good....

[playboy]

Somewhere out there in the solar system there exists an object with a chunk, the size of Hyperion, missing...just my guess

To me it seems the craters have been formed from within like volcanoes. They do not appear to be impact craters as you would see for instance on the moon. The shape of impact craters seem different to the ones on Hyperion.

[Fred Bowser]

What I see in it is a large crator taking up about three quarters of the side pictured , but most important is the round mound in the center of the crator which I take it is the object that made the crator. Anyone else see it?

[FieryIce]

"The round mound in the center of the crator" or crater as Fred mentions, I would surmise to be the center material of Hyperion and not necessarily impact material.

The image without the false colour:


Saturn's Spongy Hyperion Tumbles Into View

[Cathy]

This looks more like an asteroid than a moon to me. What I wonder about is why in the explanation is said that the picture is in false colour. There doesn't seem to be any colour at all, so I wonder how it would look like in "true colours".

[Empeda]

View my post further up - it has a faint reddish tinge.

[sgjenks01]

My first impression was of a piece of pumice rock. I used to live on the Columbia River, downstream from Mt. St. Helens. Pumice from that volcano was so light that it would literally float in water. My understanding that pumice is formed by rapid out-gassing and cooling of molten material. Perhaps the same process is at work here.

[Cathy]

[quote="sgjenks01"]My first impression was of a piece of pumice rock.

My thoughts exactly. I was thinking about the structure and my opinion is that indeed it looks very much like pumice rock.

[Empeda]

This may seem a dumb and naive question to all you geology-types but...

They say that there's dark material at the bottom of the craters - is this difintitely the case, or is it just that the holes are very deep, perhaps forming this interior cavern network they talk about?

[Cathy]

At first I thought the so called dark matter was simply the shade, but looking closely at some of the bigger ones, it really seems to me as if there are black rocks at the bottom.