Cassini snaps icy moon Dione.Like a wrinkled dowager DOWAGER. A widow endowed; one who has a jointure. 2. In England, this is a title or addition given to the widows of princes, dukes, earls, and other noblemen. , Saturn's small moon Dione has a heavily cratered cratered, adj the condition of having one or more pits, depressions, or hollows (often found on tissues and caused by ulcers). and fractured surface. The first close-up portrait of this moon, recorded by the Cassini spacecraft on Oct. 11 when it passed within 500 kilometers, shows that Dione's surface bears the scars of multiple generations of fractures that haven't been erased by any relatively recent upheavals. That's in marked contrast to Saturn's more youthful moon Enceladus, which lies nearby in the planet's E ring and was probed earlier this year by Cassini. Some of the most striking fractures on Enceladus may be only a decade old, testimony to large-scale geologic motions. "Enceladus is the up-and-coming moon, complete with a recently active history, while Dione is the older, more mature moon," says Bonnie bon·ny also bon·nie adj. bon·ni·er, bon·ni·est Scots 1. Physically attractive or appealing; pretty. 2. Excellent. Buratti of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory “JPL” redirects here. For other uses, see JPL (disambiguation). Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a NASA research center located in the cities of Pasadena and La Cañada Flintridge, near Los Angeles, California, USA. in Pasadena, Calif.--R.C. |
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