New Photos Show Red Streaks on Saturn’s Moon Tethys

IMAGE: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

By Miriam Kramer, Mashable, Aug 1, 2015 – A new false color photo of a mysterious moon of Saturn shows strange red streaks running for miles on the surface of the natural satellite.

The new image — taken using a series of color filters on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on April 11 — shows the red streaks, which look like narrow lines that are several hundred miles long but only a few miles thick on the moon Tethys‘ surface.

Scientists don’t yet know what is causing the strange red streaks, though it is possible that the red coloration is “exposed ice with chemical impurities, or the result of outgassing from inside Tethys,” NASA wrote in a statement.

“The streaks could also be associated with features like fractures that are below the resolution of the available images.”

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