Huygens site on radar

Radar of the Huygens probe landing site. It's interesting that the brightness features that dominate the infrared view are almost completely absent on radar; it's one of the pitfalls of simulated aperture radar images, which can be hard to interpret.

The landing site was just south of a region of those long, dark "cat scratches" that show up in so many of the radar images. It may have just missed a chance to observe what they are.

More strangeness in the Kuiper Belt

james_nicoll's mention reminded me of 2003 EL61, the giant whirling cigar.

There are lots of cigar- or peanut-shaped asteroids, but they're typically small bodies. This thing is almost as big as Pluto.

There was also a bit of angsty drama surrounding its discovery, which incidentally led to the earlier-than-planned announcement of the "tenth planet" 2003 UB313, as you can read on the 2003 UB313 page.

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