Unusual Red Arcs Spotted on Icy Saturn Moon

originally posted by: wildespace
I'd like to point out that the published image is, besides being false-colour, is very enhanced. I've gone to the raw Cassini images archive and made a direct stack of the infrared/green/UV frames of part of the area seen in the published image. The result was almost colourless (with just a bit of yellowish hue). Here's the image with saturation cranked up:

You can just about make out the red lines. (The red fringe around the edge of Tethys is due to images not aligning perfectly, so ignore it)

But the red colour that appears in both mine and NASA's image is really infrared colour. The moon's surface is fairly uniform in visible colours: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...

My theory about the origin of those (infra)red lines is that a few loose chunks of matter that orbits Saturn impacted the moon at a very shallow angle, leaving those streaks. The chunks were rich in tholins,complex hydrocarbons that have a reddish hue, which partially cover some other saturnian moons and the rings.

that's also a really good theory, any chuck of material that's ejected from the ring has potential to strike across the moons. Do you know of any similar marks on the other moons of Saturn?

I wish it was algae growth but I don't think that's possible in those temps. Oxidation makes the most sense, but would be a very slow process in cold temps as well.

a reply to: drewlander

I thought it looked like algae also though i understand that is unlikely .

Looks like the missus reversed into it

a reply to: mahatche

I personally would like to see a larger surface area. Might be that the markings would make more sense or be more recognizable from a distance. Feels like we've only been given enough of the picture to pique interest without having a real frame of reference to develop any substantial hypothesis from. Bet it looks vaguely like a geoglyph and they don't want to have to yet again explain it away with swamp balloons