[cogitator]

It looks like a cinder or a microphotograph of foraminifera. Here's an example of the latter to show you what I mean:

[r9etb]

Yet more proof that NASA can't do anything right....

[martin_fierro]

Wholly sh*t. Beyond kewl.

[rightinthemiddle]

Is that Karl Rove's brain?

[farlander]

That's a moon ? Looks like small chunk of rock pockmarked with asteroid impact craters. Doesn't even look round ??

[cogitator]

** astrogeology ping **

[trisham]

Amazing.

[aspiring.hillbilly]

Looks more like howard deans brain ....!

[dirtboy]

Looks like it took a huge hit right in the kisser some time ago.

[Onelifetogive]

I sure am glad we have an atmosphere. That would suck if that many asteroids managed to smash into us.....

[ChadGore]

Odd World
September 29, 2005

Full-Res: PIA07740

This stunning false-color view of Saturn's moon Hyperion reveals crisp details across the strange, tumbling moon's surface. Differences in color could represent differences in the composition of surface materials. The view was obtained during Cassini's close flyby on Sept. 26, 2005.

Hyperion has a notably reddish tint when viewed in natural color. The red color was toned down in this false-color view, and the other hues were enhanced, in order to make more subtle color variations across Hyperion's surface more apparent.

Images taken using infrared, green and ultraviolet spectral filters were combined to create this view. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 62,000 kilometers (38,500 miles) from Hyperion and at a Sun-Hyperion-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 52 degrees. The image scale is 362 meters (1,200 feet) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

[Prophet in the wilderness]

Looks like this rock took a few big hits in the passed.

[FormerACLUmember]

A gigantic ultrafrozen snowball, blasted by a billion asteroid/comet hits? If so it would be a great source of fuel for long voyages to the outer solar system and beyond.

[Constitution Day]

That is really incredible! Thanks for posting it.

[stevio]

Electrons orbit the nucleus the way the planets orbit the sun. God's construction is simply yet complex.

[EagleUSA]

An amazing mission with super success. As that moon cooled, the surface was under heavy meteor bombardment. Wow, hard to even try and count them. I continue to watch the Cassini site with amazement.

[Lockbar]

[dbwz]

That moon looks like a piece of coral I picked up off a FL beach many, many years ago.

Very cool stuff!

[RexBeach]

How far away is this moon?

[FormerACLUmember]

Awesome snowboarding down the walls of that big impact crater, dude!

[ChadGore]

When I first looked at the image, I saw what appeared to be many stretching artifacts that often come from 2D data being extrapolated onto a 3D model, as is common with many of the images from mars.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image-details.cfm?imageID=1762

What I found interesting is that this photo was a "live shot". The stretched walls of the smaller crater transitioning into the edge of the larger one must actually exist.

It's amazing, really. If you follow the "moons are collections from rings" theory as I do, this is a living example of a moon 1/2 way through the debris collection phase.