Spotty Hyperion

[mmcirvin]

A couple of weeks ago, Cassini made its closest pass yet to Hyperion. Unfortunately, most of the images taken were badly overexposed and don't look like much in the raw image archive. However, Phil Stooke collected some of the best ones in the picture linked from this forum post. (Stooke is perhaps the world's leading expert on mapping small irregular objects, and an ancestor of the same name appears to have made this uncannily accurate map of Phobos (I think saucer men were involved), so naturally he'd be interested.) Hyperion has a freckled appearance; many craters apparently have dark material at the bottom for some reason.