A Colorful Christmas Moon

Color-composite of Dione (NASA/JPL/SSI/J. Major)

Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone! Here’s your present from Lights in the Dark: a color-composite of Saturn’s moon Dione, lovingly made from raw images captured by the Cassini spacecraft on December 23.

700 miles (1120 km) wide, Dione (pronounced DEE-oh-nee) is covered pole-to-pole in craters and is crisscrossed by deep chasms and long, bright regions of “wispy line” terrain — the reflective faces of sheer ice cliffs and scarps.

Although the moon is made of ice and rock it still has some interesting colors on its surface — like the spray of warm-colored material surrounding the crater Creusa in the center of the image.

Read the rest of this article here.

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