Moon Eye Candy

I generally try to keep up with the pictures coming back from the Cassini probe mission to Saturn, and there's been some definite excitement from that part of the solar system lately from the various weblog posts I've seen. The probe made a close pass by the moon Iapetus, known before the mission to be divided between a bright side and a dark side, but since then found to also have an enormous ridge of mountains circling half of it. A very impressive image of the crescent moon has been put together; I noticed someone commenting on it saying that it looks like a "vertical scale has been exaggerated" artist's rendition, but isn't...

Of course, as far as Iapetus's pop culture role goes, the Monolith located on the bright side of the moon in Arthur C. Clarke's novel version of 2001 (somewhat different from the movie) hasn't been spotted yet. The moon was described somewhat differently from the way it really is in the book, but I suppose closer looks can be taken yet...