Amazing images of Iapetus

I hope you've had a chance to look at the incredible images from Cassini over the past 2 days! The Iapetus images are simply amazing! Find the series of Iapetus links on the Cassini website now! saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm

Deirdre Kelleghan
Irish Astronomical Soceity

Ghostly and mysterious place indeed.

The "Yin-and-Yang" aspect of Iapetus is reflected even in the world of cinema.

In the film "2001 a Space Odyssey" Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke incorrectly placed Iapetus at JUPITER !

Peter.

Was it not that the book '2001' used the Saturnian system for Discovery's destination where they find the monolith, but in the film, the Jovian system is used instead. Found this on wiki

'In Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), astronaut Dave Bowman finds an enigmatic alien monolith waiting for him on the surface of Iapetus. Because of difficulties achieving a convincing model of Saturn's rings, the film version of 2001: A Space Odyssey relocated the monolith to an orbit around Jupiter.'

Clarke describes the whole process of making the film in his book "The Lost Worlds of 2001":

www.amazon.com/Lost-Worlds-2001-Arthur-Clarke/dp/0451125363

(Nobody expects Hollywood to bother about mere facts.... such as the real location of Iapetus.)

"When the legend contradicts fact..print the legend".

Peter.

Difficult Iapetus Quiz
There is a peculiar “girdle” straddling the equator of Iapetus.
See:
space.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/dn6860/dn6860-1_500.jpg

Question:
What other moon in the solar system might have said:
“I'll put a girdle round about Iapetus in forty minutes”?

Hint 1: The other moon is not one of Saturn’s.
Hint 2: The name of the other moon has the same linguistic roots as the Irish word for “fairy”.

That’ll test you!

Peter.