All,
Forgive me if I come to this late, but no one seems to have analysed the straight line from 8 o'clock to 5 o'clock on the image linked above by ToSeek.
Using the same procedure as when verifying Travis' Fissure on Dione, I looked for Voyager pics from 25 years ago. See: http://www.solarviews.com/raw/sat/rhea1.gif .

It shows a lower def view of Rhea, with the same straight line. Although curved on the Voyager image, there are corresponding features - white markings at the right in the JPL and the top in the Voyager; tangential, similarly sized craters at either end of the line and others. I think the line is the same on both pics and so must be real.

Another one for the Imaging Team?[Imagining Team?]

John

Cassini Picture of the Day: Wrinkles of youth?

Image shows interesting ridges near the terminator of Enceladus.

We did have a short discussion about the Rhea streak on this thread about Dione, which also shows an odd linear feature:

What is this linear feature on Dione?

Round about page 4 - but it all sort of tailed off. Complete bafflement, I guess. I suppose we can just hope that closer shots will give a better idea of what's down there...

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Fin
Skep-ti-cult® member #488-28303-790

Yup, I even started a Reha thread about that linear feature. No posts though.

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Feynman
>~~~~<
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

Herschel Dead-On

Here's a processed version of the latest raw image of Titan:

Processed by me, of course.

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Moraliser Overtax Porn

The first Enceladus images have been posted
http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/view_event.php?id=11

The 1+ MB TIFFs are amazing. What a contrast between the cratered and non-cratered areas, the latter having what appear to be large fracture zones. Ice?

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Why download the +1 meg TIFFs when the PNGs have exactly the same data? Bigger file sizes doesn't necessarily mean better images!

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Moraliser Overtax Porn

Hi all,

Just saw this:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2005-029

Cheers

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Because either one takes about a second or less to D/L (cable modem). Since the other two files (PNG and JPEG) were so much smaller than the TIFF it seemed there'd be more information in the TIFF. Perhaps that's not the case based on what I've now read about PNGs. Nice format!


[edit/change letter]

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Here's the latest raw images

Heavily wrinkled surface:



Wrinkled/cratered terrain boundary:

Wow! Enceladian subdivisions, partially bombed out by rival Titanians!

Seriously, the geological contrast between the two terrains is remarkable. Is Enceladus close enough to Saturn for some Io-like tidal effects? Only this time setting off ice vulcanism?

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That one looks like Europa.

Awesome.

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That one reminds me a bit of Miranda with 2 very different terrains with a sharp division between them

Well, Io wouldn't be so active if there weren't other massive moons interacting with it. Enceladus orbits much closer, but on the other hand there are no moons massive enough nearby -- but so is the case with Miranda too. Weird.

I've just been going over the raw imagry from the Enceladus encounter and spotted this.

Can anybody hazard a guess as to what caused the 'stirrup' that appears in the upper left of the image.

Graham

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John Sladek, The New Apocrypha, pg 34.

Rifting due to a tectonic process, perhaps the same one that creates the rifts on europa, caused by a subsurface ocean or warm convecting ice mantle?

I'm more intrigued by what looks like little volcanic cones in the ice. The shadows are pointing in the wrong direction for them to be craters. (I think the light is coming from the upper right)

Also, isn't Enceladus in a resonant orbit with another moon? Wouldn't that have the effect of warming up the interior a little, perhaps enough for slight ice volcanoes?

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audentes fortuna iuvat

Light is coming from below. The circular features are craters, and the most prominent linear features are ridges, not canyons.

Ok, my eyes love to play tricks on me like that. I just flipped it over, and the perspective inverted.