Europa Press – 14:01 – 30/07/2015
NASA has found on the surface of Tethys, a moon of Saturn, mysterious red stains It elongated, as if the land had been the ‘aggression’ of a graffiti. The lines form an arc that is “inexplicable” for scientists.
The discovery was made thanks to the images obtained by the Cassini spacecraft, combining spectral filters clear, green, infrared and ultraviolet. According to experts, the pictures show a red bows of narrow and curved on the surface of the moon lines, and are among the most unusual features of color on the moons of this planet.
Some red bows can be seen faintly in the comments made earlier in the Cassini mission, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004. But the color images for this observation, April 2015, are the first to show large areas of northern Tethys with this anomaly seen clearly.
This is also because, as the Saturn system moves to the northern hemisphere as a result of summer, the northern latitudes are better illuminated. “That’s why the arches are clearly visible for the first time,” he pointed the head of the mission, Paul Schenk. MYSTERY
The origin of the characteristics and their reddish color is a mystery to scientists from Cassini. The possibilities that are covered include chemical impurities in the ice covering the moon, or the result of the degassing of the interior of Tethys. They may also be associated with other characteristics such as geological fractures.
“The red bows must be geologically young because they are opposed to the characteristics of the oldest events such as impact craters, but do not know their actual age,” he pointed one of the scientists, Paul Helfenstein .
At the moment, researchers are waiting because, if the stain is only a thin veneer color on the frozen ground, its exposure to the space environment on the surface of Tethys could erase scales relatively short time.
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