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The reddish and bluish hues on the icy surfaces of Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione and Rhea appear to be the aftermath of bombardments large and small.
A paper based on the findings was recently published online in the journal Icarus. In it, scientists describe prominent global patterns that trace the trade routes for material exchange between the moons themselves, an outer ring of Saturn known as the E ring and the planet's magnetic environment.
The finding may explain the mysterious Pac-Man thermal pattern on Mimas, found earlier this year by Cassini scientists, said lead author Paul Schenk, who was funded by a Cassini data analysis program grant and is based at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.
"The beauty of it all is how the satellites behave as a family, recording similar processes and events on their surfaces, each in its own unique way," Schenk said.
"I don't think anyone expected that electrons would leave such obvious fingerprints on planetary surfaces, but we see it on several moons, including Mimas, which was once thought to be rather bland."
Schenk and colleagues processed raw images obtained by Cassini's imaging cameras from 2004 to 2009 to produce new, high-resolution global color maps of these five moons. The new maps used camera frames shot through visible-light, ultraviolet and infrared filters which were processed to enhance our views of these moons beyond what could be seen by the human eye.
"The richness of the Cassini data set - visible images, infrared images, ultraviolet images, measurements of the radiation
belts - is such that we can finally 'paint a picture' as to how the satellites themselves are 'painted,'" said William B. McKinnon, one of six co-authors on the paper. McKinnon is based at Washington University in St. Louis and was also funded by the Cassini data analysis program.
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