"Meri Crater"

Saturn's moon Hyperion's crater, Meri, blooms in this extreme color-enhanced view. Meri is overprinted by a couple of smaller craters and displays dark material on its floor that is characteristic of many impact sites on this moon. The walls of craters seen here are noticeably smoother on their sloping sides than around their craggy rims.

To create this false-color view, ultraviolet, green and infrared images were combined into a single black and white picture that isolates and maps regional color differences. This "color map" was then superimposed over a clear-filter image. The combination of color map and brightness image shows how the colors vary across the moon's surface in relation to geologic features.
The origin of the color differences is not yet understood, but may be caused by subtle differences in the surface composition or the sizes of grains making up the icy soil. The images used to create this false-color view were acquired on 09-26-2005, at a mean distance of 17.900 Km from Hyperion. Image scale is about 110 meters (360 feet) per pixel.