WASHINGTON: According to NASA, the red streaks have been clearly distinguished on Saturn’s moon Tethys for the first time as it entered the northern hemisphere summer. These colours were detected by cameras of NASA’s spacecraft, Cassini.
According to the details captured by Cassini, it has been seen that the medium sized moon Tethys has large craters and a bright basin on its surface. It is primarily made of water ice (across 1,060 km approximately) and has a very low density.
The basin called Odysseus is known to cover about 280 miles (diameter of moon is 660 miles only) and is said to be captured from a distance of about 186,000 miles by a multi-wavelength technique of imaging.
As stated by Paul Helfenstein of Cornell University and Cassini imaging scientist, the estimated age of the streaks is unknown and it appears to be a recent geological phenomenon.
The previous researches on this moon were carried out by spacecraft Pioneer 11 in 1973, Voyager 1 in 1980 and voyager 2 in 1981 and no red streaks were observed until Cassini (2004) came into existence.
Cassini (2004) is the only spacecraft that remained in space for about 10 years and completed its epic journey around Saturn’s orbit revealing its unusual features that were never seen before. The future researches are aimed to explore the outskirts and rings of this planet.
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