Compositional maps of saturn's moon phoebe from imaging spectroscopy

ABSTRACT The origin of Phoebe, which is the outermost large satellite of Saturn, is of particular interest because its inclined, retrograde orbit suggests that it was gravitationally

captured by Saturn, having accreted outside the region of the solar nebula in which Saturn formed1. By contrast, Saturn's regular satellites (with prograde, low-inclination, circular

orbits) probably accreted within the sub-nebula in which Saturn itself formed2. Here we report imaging spectroscopy of Phoebe resulting from the Cassini–Huygens spacecraft encounter on 11

June 2004. We mapped ferrous-iron-bearing minerals, bound water, trapped CO2, probable phyllosilicates, organics, nitriles and cyanide compounds. Detection of these compounds on Phoebe makes

it one of the most compositionally diverse objects yet observed in our Solar System. It is likely that Phoebe's surface contains primitive materials from the outer Solar System,

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institutions were funded by NASA; authors from European institutions were funded by ESA. AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * US Geological Survey, MS964, Federal Center, Box

25046, Colorado, 80225, Denver, USA Roger N. Clark, Todd M. Hoefen & John M. Curchin * Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Stewart Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona,

85721, USA Robert H. Brown & J. Lunine * German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Space Sensor Technology and Planetary Exploration, Rutherfordstrasse 2, D-12489, Berlin, Germany Ralf

Jaumann & K.-D. Matz * NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, 94035, USA Dale P. Cruikshank * Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena,

California, 91109, USA Robert M. Nelson, Bonnie J. Buratti, K. H. Baines & D. L. Matson * University of Hawaii at Manoa, HIGP/SOEST, 1680 East-West Road, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822, USA

Thomas B. McCord * Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario, CNR, 00133, Rome, Italy G. Bellucci, F. Capaccioni, P. Cerroni, A. Coradini, V. Formisano & V. Mennella * Institut

d'Astrophysique Spatiale, Université de Paris-Sud, F-91405, Orsay Cedex, France J.-P. Bibring & Y. Langevin * Astronomy Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 14853, USA

P. D. Nicholson * Observatoire de Paris, 92195, Meudon, France B. Sicardy * Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique, UMR CNRS 6112, Université de Nantes, 44322, Nantes, France C. Sotin *

Planetary Science Institute NW, Corporate Center Pasadena, 255 S. Lake Avenue, Suite 300, Pasadena, California, 91101, USA Karl Hibbits * Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University

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competing financial interests. RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Clark, R., Brown, R., Jaumann, R. _et al._ Compositional maps of

Saturn's moon Phoebe from imaging spectroscopy. _Nature_ 435, 66–69 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03558 Download citation * Received: 21 December 2004 * Accepted: 11 March 2005

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