Cometary collisions and the dark material on Iapetus

Abstract

Iapetus (S8) is unique in our solar system in that the albedo of its leading hemisphere is only 0.05 while that of the trailing side is 0.5. Several existing hypotheses are examined and found inadequate. Photometric studies of the dark side are compared to comet nuclei and class D asteroids. It is hypothesized that in the last 106–108 yrs the leading side suffered a high-velocity collision with a cometary body of mass 1013–1015 kg and traveling at a speed of 20 km s−1. About 5–16% of the excavated material was ejected into space, where the vaporized ices dissipated while the dark carbonaceous/silicate material was reaccreted on the leading side. The collision, although not sufficient to break Iapetus' tidal lock, resulted in a period of oscillation of about 5 yr. Until tidal friction reasserted a lock, the oscillation gave rise to the ‘longitude effect’, viz., the observed fact that the dark material covers more than 220 ‡ of longitude but only 110 ‡ of latitude.