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Iapetus
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Saturn: Iapetus
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Saturn: Iapetus
Saturn: Iapetus Image of Iapetus from the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft.

Iapetus

astronomy
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Written by
Bonnie Buratti
Senior Research Scientist, Principal Scientist and Supervisor: Comets, Asteroids, and Satellites Group, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology.
Bonnie Buratti,
William B. Hubbard
Professor of Planetary Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson. Author of Planetary Interiors.
William B. Hubbard•All
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Iapetus, outermost of Saturn’s major regular moons, extraordinary because of its great contrast in surface brightness. It was discovered by the Italian-born French astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini in 1671 and named for one of the Titans of Greek mythology. Iapetus has a radius of 718 km (446 miles) and orbits Saturn once every 79.3 Earth days at a distance of 3,561,300 km (2,212,900 miles). Its bulk density of 1.0 grams per cubic cm implies that it must be made mostly of ices. The closer moons of Saturn orbit within roughly one degree of Saturn’s equatorial plane, but, at Iapetus’s orbit ...(100 of 652 words)

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