Cassini captures close up images of Saturn’s moon Tethys and its enormous crater

Tethys is one of Saturn’s largest icy moons, but it stands out from the others with an unmistakable feature. A giant crater called Odyssey covers a large portion of its surface area, showing that a large object crashed into it at one point in its history.

The Cassini spacecraft, currently on a 20-year mission throughout our Solar System, captured some up close images of Tehtys last November, and NASA has published them for the public to see. In the images, the Odysseus crater is very visible, giving the image that Tehtys is a giant eye with a large, pale pupil.

The impact of the object that created Odyssey was so large that the rebound created a significant mountain clump in the center of the crater, which has been named Scheria Montes.

Cassini reached Saturn in 2004, and it has collected valuable data ever since. Its most significant achievement was dropping the Huygens probe on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, back in 2005, becoming the first object to land there. Cassini’s mission is nearly completed, and it will purposefully crash into Saturn later this year.

Memories of my college film class days

NASA’s images are sparking memories of Un Chien Andalou, back from the first time I saw the traumatizing eyeball scene. How does it feel knowing that a giant eyeball orbiting Saturn could be watching you wherever you go. Ugh, creepy!