Two-Faced Moon Shows its True Colors

Saturn’s moon Iapetus is the yin-yang moon. Half of its surface is dark as coal, while the other side is blindingly pale. Astronomers have been perplexed by the moon's two-faced nature since its discovery 335 years ago. But researchers have just solved the mystery thanks to pictures from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which recently flew closer to the moon than any mission has ever been. Researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced this week that they think the Sun caused the dark and light pattern by evaporating ice on half the moon, which left a layer of black dirt behind. The bright side, they say, is where the surface remains covered in water-ice. Scientists suspected this might be happening, but the hunch was confirmed by the new close-up images, which reveal that dark material seems to coat ridges and sides of craters that face the equator, while surfaces that point away ...