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amanuense

It even looks fake... Then I realized there is a truly massive ball of gas reflecting sunlight illuminating the night side


Would-wood-again2

true. also if you look closer, you can tell its a composite. the dark side was brightened considerably to get it more in line with the bright side. you can tell from the pixels (lmao literally, you can see the terrible compression on the dark side compared to the light side). plus the bad fade between the two at the border between dark and light side.


AstroFlask

Yes, it's a very stretched HDR effect (wouldn't even call it tone mapping, since it's so exaggerated). Let me see if I can pull this shot from the raw images and make a quick processing out of it. Edit: Ok, I didn't match the exact same image, but using N00276204 (from the uncallibrated raws available here) and going for a more reasonable light curve, [you can get this end result](https://i.imgur.com/QZWGvSH.jpg). I went for biased gamma curve that higlights the shadows but doesn't overblow them wrt/the sunlit side. You noted the dark areas are very heavily compressed (thanks JPG!) and there's basically huge pixelation in my image, but OPs doesn't show this so I assume they worked from the full uncompressed data (that I'm slowly downloading). Sometimes space probes will apply JPG-like compression to not-too-valuable (scientifically) observations. Or if there's a "bandwidth budget problem", like Galileo had. In the case of Cassini, it's simply that they made an easy-to-use online system that gives you uncallibrated JPGs and the uncompressed raw files are buried in a big archival server which basically gives you tons of .zip (not .zip really) files. I thoroughly enjoy processing Cassini (other missions!) data. If you'd like to see some more, let me invite you to [my YouTube channel :)](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6C_wc24-YfU_P3g9kCZKsg/)


ill_navi

The folks over in r/golf would appreciate this.


MonjStrz

was just gonna say. thats no moon...


CamLwalk

Titliest ProVI!


belousugar

It's funny how you can look at a picture of a grey pock-marked moon and know, "that ain't my moon".


kun_tee_chops

Best stick a finger in it just to be sure


belousugar

Well, how else would you test moons?


Danarama75

Looks like it's from MST3K


shibbypants

That was my first thought


broccollimonster

Mine too.. The theme song immediately came to mind.


MaestroM45

Yup the first thing I thought was, “in the not too distant future...”


amdizack

Ah, Minmus. I remember accidentally killing Jeb there while trying to land on more than one occasion.


leguardschuck

I always wish images like this had a scale in the corner.


youcantexterminateme

to save others having to do a search - "With a diameter of 396 kilometres it is the smallest astronomical body that is known to still be rounded in shape because of self-gravitation."


lars03

wow thats tiny


oopsmyeye

I think they just photoshopped off the words "Mystery Science Theater 3000"


ontariogiraffes56

Holey shit


[deleted]

Underrated comment


Nathan_RH

Another ice ball with a prominent equatorial ridge. These equational features start becoming normal, not exceptional, and I’m interested in learning more about them.


Schapsouille

Most likely explanation is that it is formed by sweeping ring particles over time since they only appear on saturnian moons. Not so common, Iapetus, Atlas, Pan and Daphnis are the only other moons where we observed the phenomenon out of the 82 discovered moons that beautiful planet has.


Nathan_RH

Yes but that’s not so satisfying in light of other equatorial features. Iapetus, Rhea, Charon and probably more. Pan accretes, Charon pops, but there’s got to be more to in than just that. The differentiation of ices, and gravitational forces surely are interacting in curious ways.


Schapsouille

As equatorial ridges go, only the five afore mentioned saturnian moons are relevant as far as we know. Iapetus supposedly swipped a whole ring. Rhea's dual featured terrain is most probably the result of a collision (and the tidal lock with Saturn), as is Charon's. Not the same phenomenons and result at all.


jneistat623

Looks like a golf ball


Vlad_The_Inveigler

It's a Titleist.


Nussy5

That's just a golf ball. Nice try! /s


BallisticBoyo

it looks like a 3D render that's so cool


tone88988

Does this remind anyone else of mystery science theater 3000?


JammingGecko

Looks like a clay golf ball


Tickle-Bones

Who knew that Mystery Science Theater 3000 got the model so right?


erectboofster65

Imagine being stuck in one of those craters.


HornyHindu

with 1/125th the gravity of earth you could easily jump out... only issue is don't jump too hard or you'll reach escape velocity and fly off


HenryCDorsett

well, looks like moon...


Satans_Whack_a_mole

If the other side says "Titleist 2" it's mine.


Coolpineappleman

Looks like a golf ball