The 280-mile-wide (450 km) impact crater Odysseus on Tethys stands out brightly from the rest of the illuminated crescent as seen by the NASA/ESA Cassini spacecraft.
Several images taken using green, UV and IR spectral filters were combined to create this color view of Tethys. The moon’s dark side is faintly illuminated by reflected light from Saturn. North on Tethys is up in this view. The impact crater Odysseus is seen at the left. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.
Tethys, Saturn’s fifth largest moon, was discovered in 1684 by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini.
The moon is a cold and heavily scarred body, about 662 miles (1,066 km) in diameter.
It is similar in nature to Saturn’s moons Rhea and Dione except that Tethys is not as heavily cratered as the other two.
The huge impact crater Odysseus, named for a Greek warrior king in Homer’s works, dominates the western hemisphere of the small moon, covering about one-fifth of the surface area.
A comparably sized crater on Earth would be as large as Africa.
In the new image from the Cassini spacecraft, Odysseus stands out brightly from the rest of the illuminated icy crescent.
This distinct coloration may result from differences in either the composition or structure of the terrain exposed by the giant impact.
The image was snapped on May 9, 2015 from a distance of 186,000 miles (300,000 km) from Tethys.
