Rhea Revisited, Mosaics from the 30 August 2007 Encounter Options

[Exploitcorporati...]

In the excitement leading up to the Iapetus flyby twelve days later, the 5000 km-range nontargeted Rhea encounter (49RH) recieved relatively little attention here. As we all know, Rhea is the most dynamic and thrilling of the worlds in orbit around Saturn, and I'm certain that the short shrift it's been given infuriates you all to the point of aneurysm. A combination of sucktastic downsampling on the raws page, smeared Saturnshine, and equatorial-ridge envy doomed this beautiful visit to oblivion. As I've had the pleasure of taking a day off to play with these (thanks Emily for that awesome Selected ISS Data page!) I'm proud/drunk to present The Forgotten Flyby.

[Exploitcorporati...]

Here's poster showcasing all the currently available products from this flyby with *&%#@(!!) Ray Crater in view. I stole ugordan's fantastic distant color rendition from his flickr page. (psssst....I'd like to see that whole mosaic in color sometime. If anyone can do it, it's you.) The closeup view in the upper right corner begs a few questions...."Is all that powdery craterless freshness landslides? What's up with that peppering of tiny craters near the central peak? Are those layers in them thar walls?"
On that note, where does the time go?

[stevesliva]

The closeup view in the upper right corner begs a few questions...."Is all that powdery craterless freshness landslides? What's up with that peppering of tiny craters near the central peak? Are those layers in them thar walls?"

Some massive settling on the left post-impact means fewer secondary impact craters than on the right?

[ugordan]

Speaking of impact deposits, did anyone take note of a string of dark stains seen vertical (splitting the mosaic right in half) in my above composite? Here's a crop and enhancement at the original geometry, equator is roughy horizontal:


They're very faint, but are black-ish unlike the rest of Rhean regolith. Apparently they can only be seen in lower phase imagery due to very low contrast. Do we know of a crater whose ejecta might have produced this (although ejecta on Rhea seems brighter than the surroundings) or could this have something to do with the hypothesized ring? I found the equatorial orientation somewhat interesting, otherwise I'd pay no attention to this.