14 DAY TRIAL // This past Tuesday, researchers with the European Space Agency released a gorgeously detailed image of Hyperion, one of Saturn's outer moons.
The view, available next to this article, was produced by the Cassini spacecraft a while back, on September 26, 2005. At that time, the probe successfully flew by the celestial body and managed to image its surface.
Unlike Earth's natural satellite, which many say looks as if it were made of cheese, this moon of Saturn bears a striking resemblance to a sea sponge.
“The subject of this image bears a remarkable resemblance to a porous sea sponge, floating in the inky black surroundings of the deep sea,” European Space Agency scientists say.
As explained by astronomers, Hyperion appears porous because it sports a whole lot of craters of all shapes and sizes on its surface. How these craters got there remains a mystery.
Apart from the fact that it resembles a sea sponge, another thing that is super-duper weird about Hyperion is that is has an irregular shape.
In fact, many agree that its silhouette is not very different to that of a potato. A cosmic potato measuring 410 x 260 x 220 kilometers (254 x 161 x 136 miles), to be more precise.
Although they have not yet had the chance to study it in detail, researchers have reasons to believe that Hyperion is mostly made of water ice with just a dash of rock fragments.