Image captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows red graffiti-like streaks on

New color images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have revealed unusual, graffiti-like red-colored streaks on the surface of Saturn’s icy moon Tethys.

But the colour images are the first to show large northern areas of Tethys under the illumination and viewing conditions necessary to see the arcs clearly.

‘It’s surprising how extensive these features are.’. “Here, the giant impact basin Odysseus on Saturn’s moon Tethys stands out brightly from the rest of the illuminated icy crescent”, NASA said in a statement.

Their origin remains a mystery to scientists monitoring information sent back to Earth from the Cassini-Huygens probe, although it has been suggested the red material is exposed ice with chemical impurities from gas being released from inside Tethys.

With all the hubbub about Pluto and extraterrestrial planets, no one seems to be paying attention to the fingerpaint-esque pan-gender celebration of passion apparently limning its way across the surface of one of Saturn’s moons.

The view was acquired on May 9, 2015 at a distance of approximately 186,000 miles from Tethys. Or they might be associated with features such as fractures that are below the resolution of the available images.

Apart from Jupiter’s coveted moon Europa, the reddish features on show here are very rare in the Saturn system. Cassini, a collaborative effort with the European and Italian Space Agencies, will continue to examine the unique Saturn system until its planned dive into the ringed planet’s atmosphere in September 2017. The color of the surface can be seen to change across the disk, from yellowish hues to almost white. First, Saturn’s diffuse E-ring preferentially bombards Tethys’ leading hemisphere, toward the right side in this image, with ice bright ice grains. A similar pattern is traceable on the Dione moon, whereas the other 62 moons do not have mosaic color patterns.

The way they did it was by keeping their gazes (i.e. the researchers’) on highlighted anomalies of color webbing out across Tethys’ mad, wrinkly surface. The origin of this localized color contrast is not yet understood.

What are they? Scientists aren’t sure.

“If the stain is only a thin, coloured veneer on the icy soil, exposure to the space environment at Tethys” surface might erase them on relatively short time scales.’.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

“The red arcs really popped out when we saw the new images”.