Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Moons - Iapetus

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Iapetus Multimedia Gallery

Iapetus [pronounced eye-APP-eh-tuss; adjective form: Iapetian] has been called the yin and yang of the Saturn moons because its leading hemisphere has a reflectivity (or albedo) as dark as coal (albedo 0.03-0.05 with a slight reddish tinge) and its trailing hemisphere is much brighter at 0.5-0.6.

The Two Faces of Iapetus

Giovanni Cassini observed the dark-light difference when he discovered Iapetus in 1671. He noted that he could only see Iapetus on the west side of Saturn. He correctly concluded that Iapetus had one side much darker than the other side, and that Iapetus was tidally locked with Saturn.

Scientists have long wondered why one hemisphere of Iapetus is so dark compared to the other hemisphere, and so dark compared to other surfaces in the Saturn system. Iapetus may be sweeping up particles from the more-distant dark moon, Phoebe. If that is the darkening mechanism, it should be steadily renewing the dark surface because very few fresh bright craters are detected within the dark terrain. An alternate theory is that there might be ice volcanism distributing darker material to the surface. Volcano-like eruptions of hydrocarbons might form the dark surfaces, particularly after chemical reactions caused by solar radiation.

The September 2007 Cassini flyby of Iapetus showed that a third process, thermal segregation, is probably the most responsible for Iapetus' dark hemisphere. Iapetus has a very slow rotation, longer than 79 days. Such a slow rotation means that the daily temperature cycle is very long, so that the dark material can absorb heat from the Sun and warm up. (The dark material absorbs more heat than the bright icy material.) This heating will cause any volatile, or icy, species within the dark material to sublime out, and retreat to colder regions on Iapetus. This sublimation of volatiles causes the dark material to become even darker -- and causes neighboring bright, cold regions to become even brighter. Iapetus may have experienced a (possibly small) influx of dark material from an external source, which could have warmed up and triggered this thermal segregation process.

The Equatorial Ridge

The second most notable feature of Iapetus is its "equatorial ridge," a chain of 10-kilometer (6-mile) high mountains girdling the moon's equator. On the anti-Saturnian side of Iapetus, the ridge appears to break up and distinct, partially bright mountains are observed. The Voyager I and Voyager II encounters provided the first knowledge of these mountains, and they are informally referred to as the Voyager Mountains. There are two theories on how the ridge formed. Some scientists think the ridge was formed at an earlier time when Iapetus rotated much faster than it does today; others think the ridge is made of material left from the collapse of a ring.

Other Features

Iapetus has a diameter of 1,471 kilometers (914 miles) and a density only 1.2 times that of liquid water. It has been suggested that Iapetus (like Rhea) is three quarters ice and one quarter rock.

Iapetus orbits at 3,561,300 kilometers (2,213,000 miles) from Saturn. The great distance from Saturn's tidal forces and from most of the other moons and ring particles has probably allowed the Iapetus surface to be largely unaffected by any melting episodes that could have caused some smoothing or "resurfacing" on some of the moons closer to Saturn.

However, despite the great distance, Saturn has tidally locked Iapetus. The moon always presents the same face toward the Saturn.

As with some other Saturnian moons, Iapetus is in resonance with Saturn's largest moon, Titan, which orbits at 1,221,850 kilometers (759,200 miles). That means that the two objects speed up and slow down as they pass each other in a complex set of variations. However, Iapetus has a diameter less than a third of Titan's diameter, so its rotation and orbit are affected much less than those of Iapetus.

Discovery and Naming

Giovanni Cassini discovered Iapetus in 1671. However, Iapetus appeared only as a bright-and-dark dot to astronomers until the Voyager I and Voyager II encounters in 1980 and 1981. John Herschel suggested that the moons of Saturn be associated with mythical brothers and sisters of Kronus, known to the Romans as Saturn. The name Iapetus comes from the Greek god (or titan) Iapetus, who was a son of Uranus and Gaia and was the father of Atlas and Prometheus. As the father of Prometheus, the ancient Greeks regarded Iapetus as the father of the human race.

Cassini referred to Iapetus as one of the Sidera Lodoicea (Stars of Louis) after King Louis XIV (the other three were Tethys, Dione, and Rhea). Other astronomers called Iapetus by its number in the order of moons discovered at the time. Iapetus started as Saturn V, and it became Saturn VIII after additional moons were discovered. Geological features on Iapetus generally get their names from the French epic poem The Song of Roland. The International Astronomical Union now controls naming of astronomical bodies.