Slightly better Iapetus picture...

[mmcirvin]

This is from the most recent spate of raw Cassini images. It's in pseudo-color; the spectrum I'm mapping to visible colors actually extends into the infrared and ultraviolet. The image has been sharpened considerably and brightness values taken from a visible-light, clear-filter image. The equatorial ridge is more obvious, though surface relief near the equator is still frustratingly poor because of the sun angle.

I'm handicapped here by the fact that JPL's Web "raw images" aren't really the raw images; they're the raw images converted rapidly into JPEGs (few would be able to see them otherwise), which loses much of their available dynamic range (Cassini images with more than 8 bits per channel) and introduces compression artifacts. That's a particular problem when trying to bring out subtle surface detail near the equator in Iapetus's dark oval. The actual Cassini imaging team has much better raw data to work with when creating press images. But it's fun to get my processed versions out a little in advance of the imaging team's.