Tethys - A New Ridge, -no not the second Death Star |
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Tethys - A New Ridge, -no not the second Death Star |
 Dec 13 2010, 04:23 PM
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 Member  Group: Members Posts: 158 Joined: 6-March 07 From: texas Member No.: 1828  |
Tethys - A New Ridge
It was posted on my blog. It was posted on Facebook. Now see it here, limited engagement only! Those topographic maps of Saturn's icy moons i showed at DPS in October show lots of cool things. Among them an large sinuous ridge stretching diagonally across the front face of Tethys. Rising 2 to 3 kilometers, it is always ~550 km from the rim of giant crater Odysseus. On one side are smooth textured rolling heavily cratered plains, but between the ridge and Odysseus are heavily pitted plains. Either the ridge is a tectonic ring formed by Odysseus, like the multiring basins on the Moon and Mercury, or it is the outer edge of a massive ejecta deposit from Odysseus. Also shown here is the enhanced color view of the same side showing the dusky equatorial band now attributed to the bombardment of high-energy retrograde electrons spiralling inside Saturn's magnetosphere. A similar band was discovered on Mimas, which i will talk again about at AGU tomorrow. Paul (-from SF)
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-------------------- Dr. Paul Schenk, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston TX
http://stereomoons.blogspot.com; http://www.youtube.com/galsat400; http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/schenk/ |
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Dec 13 2010, 06:47 PM
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 Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 49 Joined: 9-October 10 From: Victoria, BC Member No.: 5483 |
Nice find! Will you be posting something showing the Mimas ridge after your talk too?
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Dec 13 2010, 07:29 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 4513 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
No, Mimas spectrally distinct band, not Mimas ridge!
Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
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Dec 13 2010, 11:22 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 158 Joined: 6-March 07 From: texas Member No.: 1828 |
QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Dec 13 2010, 02:29 PM)  No, Mimas spectrally distinct band, not Mimas ridge! Phil phil is right. see http://stereomoons.blogspot.com/2010/10/co...-published.html for the low-down on why both satellites have this color band. kinda like a cummerbund i guess . . . Its all in the alteration of the surface microstructure by high-energy electrons. cool that they have to power to do this. -------------------- Dr. Paul Schenk, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston TX
http://stereomoons.blogspot.com; http://www.youtube.com/galsat400; http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/schenk/ |
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Dec 14 2010, 04:23 AM
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 Director of Galilean Photography Group: Members Posts: 709 Joined: 15-July 04 From: Austin, TX Member No.: 93 |
So are you talking about the whole blue band around the middle? I thought it was a color stitching problem.
-------------------- Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks
-- "The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C Clarke Mother Nature is the final inspector of all quality. |
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Dec 31 2010, 10:38 PM
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 Member Group: Members Posts: 738 Joined: 5-March 05 From: Boulder, CO Member No.: 184 |
I think the Tethys band is real with an early mention here (posts 12 & 15):
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...mp;#entry114175 This band is a separate phenomenon from the Tethys ridge. -------------------- Steve [ my planetary maps page ]
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Jan 1 2011, 04:16 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 158 Joined: 6-March 07 From: texas Member No.: 1828 |
QUOTE (scalbers @ Dec 31 2010, 04:38 PM) I think the Tethys band is real with an early mention here (posts 12 & 15): http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...mp;#entry114175 This band is a separate phenomenon from the Tethys ridge. Thats Correct. Tethys and Mimas both have surface color and brightness alterations in a wide band along their equators (on the leading side only). These are due to electron bombardment. Tethys has a narrow topographic ridge crossing the equator that is also circumferential around the giant Odysseus basin. This might be due to ejecta deposition altho we are having some trouble replicating it on the computer. Whether Mimas has a ridge is not yet known but will be shortly. Turns out these small moons are rather more complicated . . . -------------------- Dr. Paul Schenk, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston TX
http://stereomoons.blogspot.com; http://www.youtube.com/galsat400; http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/schenk/ |
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Jan 9 2011, 09:46 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 738 Joined: 5-March 05 From: Boulder, CO Member No.: 184 |
Yes, interesting to see all these phenomena. What is it that constrains the width of the electron deposition? It looks to have a fairly well defined range of latitudes on Tethys.
-------------------- Steve [ my planetary maps page ]
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