Word: iapetus
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...MOONS: Next up: two-tone Iapetus, tumbling Hyperion and Earth-like Titan...
...swirl of Saturnian moons. It would be nearly impossible for one ship to visit all 31 known satellites in Saturn's litter, so NASA has selected nine of them, both for their scientific promise and their comparatively convenient locations. The exotic names of the chosen moons--Phoebe, Titan, Iapetus, Enceladus, Mimas, Tethys, Hyperion, Dione and Rhea--hint at the exotic science that awaits...
...Iapetus, for example, is a two-toned world, its leading edge dark, its trailing edge white. There are many theories advanced for this--including the possibility that there are hemisphere-wide volcanoes or that the moon is picking up dust as it moves through its orbit, staining its face and leaving the other side clean. "We have all kinds of questions," says Cassini physicist Larry Soderblum. "Were there volcanoes? Were there oceans of some mystical hydrocarbon that froze...
...Iapetus 892 miles...
...other great pioneer among Saturn watchers was the 17th century Italian-French more Jean Dominique Cassini. He located and named four more satellites (Iapetus, Rhea, Dione and Tethys). But Cassini's place in the heavens, and in was history of astronomy, rests on the discovery of a gap in what was then presumed to be a solid, opaque ring around Saturn. Other moons, as well as rings, were up in the intervening centuries, bringing the number up to a dozen. It took Voyager 1 to reveal that the "Cassini division" was not a gap, but many more rings...