This radar image of the surface of Saturn's moon Titan was acquired on October 26, 2004, when the Cassini spacecraft flew approximately 1,600 kilometers (994 miles) above the surface and acquired radar data for the first time.
Brighter areas may correspond to rougher terrains and darker areas are thought to be smoother. This image highlights some of the darker terrain, which the Cassiniteam has dubbed "Si-Si the Cat." This nickname was chosen after a team member'sdaughter, Si-Si, pointed out that the dark terrain has a cat-like appearance. Theinterconnected dark spots are consistent with a very smooth or highly absorbingsolid, or could conceivably be liquid.
The image is about 250 kilometers (155 miles) wide by 478 kilometers (297 miles) long, and is centered at 50 N, 54 W in the northern hemisphere of Titan, over a region that has not yet been imaged optically. The smallest details seen on the image vary from about 300 meters (984 feet) to 1 kilometer (.62 mile).
The data were acquired in the synthetic aperture radar mode of Cassini's radar instrument. In this mode, radio signals are bounced off the surface of Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The instrument team is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
For the latest news about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. For more information about the mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
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Exposing Titan's Surface
This image is a composite of several images taken during two separate Titan flybys on Oct. 9 (T19) and Oct. 25 (T20).
The large circular feature near the center of Titan's disk may be the remnant of a very old impact basin. The mountain ranges to the southeast of the circular feature, and the long dark, linear feature to the northwest of the old impact scar may have resulted from tectonic activity on Titan caused by the energy released when the impact occurred.
The Oct. 9 images form the background globe for context, and the most recent images from the Oct. 25 flyby are overlaid. The Oct. 9 images were taken at an average distance of about 30,000 kilometers (18,000 miles). The Oct. 25 images were taken at a distance of 12,000 kilometers (7,200 miles). The images were taken at wavelengths of 1.3 microns shown in blue, 2 microns shown in green, and 5 microns shown in red.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona where this image was produced.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.
Although most of the region observed by the Cassini radar instrument in the February close flyby of Titan is very different from the regions imaged in October, the area shown in this image appears quite similar.
Running about 300 kilometers (186 miles) from top to bottom, the image shows a complex of bright hills and ridges surrounded by a dark plain. In radar imaging, large dark expanses are either relatively smooth, or absorb radio waves effectively, or both. Seen more faintly in the dark plains are subtle features, the origins of which are unclear. These features have some resemblance to the features seen in the October flyby that were characterized as "cryovolcanic" meaning flows of warm ice, or mixtures of liquid water and ammonia (see PIA06993).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Titan's detached, high-altitude haze layer encircles its smoggy globe in this ultraviolet view, which also features the moon's north polar hood. The northern hemisphere is currently in its Winter season.
Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 2, 2007 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (816,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 20 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This image set was taken at a distance of 15,000 kilometers (9,300 miles) from Titan and shows two views of an area riddled by mountain ranges that were probably produced by tectonic forces.
Near the bottom of the right image, a band of bright clouds is seen. These clouds are probably produced when gaseous methane in Titan's atmosphere cools and condenses into methane fog as Titan's winds drive air over the mountains. It was once thought that these recurring clouds were produced by volcanic activity on Titan, but this image calls that idea into question.
These views were obtained during an Oct. 25 flyby designed to obtain the highest-resolution infrared views of Titan yet. Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer resolved surface features as small as 400 meters (1,300 feet). The images were taken at wavelengths of 1.3 microns shown in blue, 2 microns shown in green, and 5 microns shown in red.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona where this image was produced.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.
A mosaic of nine processed images recently acquired during Cassini's first very close flyby of Saturn's moon Titan on Oct. 26, 2004, constitutes the most detailed full-disc view of the mysterious moon.
The view is centered on 15 degrees South latitude, and 156 degrees West longitude. Brightness variations across the surface and bright clouds near the south pole are easily seen.
The images that comprise the mosaic have been processed to reduce the effects of the atmosphere and to sharpen surface features. The mosaic has been trimmed to show only the illuminated surface and not the atmosphere above the edge of the moon. The Sun was behind Cassini so nearly the full disc is illuminated. Pixels scales of the composite images vary from 2 to 4 kilometers per pixel (1.2 to 2.5 miles per pixel).
Surface features are best seen near the center of the disc, where the spacecraft is looking directly downwards; the contrast becomes progressively lower and surface features become fuzzier towards the outside, where the spacecraft is peering through haze, a circumstance that washes out surface features.
The brighter region on the right side and equatorial region is named Xanadu Regio. Scientists are actively debating what processes may have created the bizarre surface brightness patterns seen here. The images hint at a young surface with, no obvious craters. However, the exact nature of that activity, whether tectonic, wind-blown, fluvial, marine, or volcanic is still to be determined.
The images comprising this mosaic were acquired from distances ranging from 650,000 kilometers (400,000 miles) to 300,000 kilometers (200,000 miles).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This view of Titan reveals structure in the moon's complex atmosphere. The geometry of the Cassini spacecraft's view of Titan during this flyby was similar to that of Voyager 1's pass in 1980.
The image was taken in visible violet light and shows the detached high haze layer that envelops Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across), with additional complexity to its structure in the far north. Some of this atmospheric structure is also visible in a color view (see PIA07700) taken at about the same time.
The image was taken in visible violet light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Dec. 26, 2005, at a distance of approximately 194,000 kilometers (121,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 29 degrees. The image scale is 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Smog-enshrouded Titan shows itself to be a featureless orb in this Cassini image taken in visible light. There is no sign here of the streaky clouds seen near the moon's south pole in previous Cassini images of the opposite hemisphere. Titan's diameter is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles).
Although Titan's atmosphere blocks any view of its surface at visible wavelengths, Cassini is equipped with powerful cameras that can peer through the obscuring haze.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Sept. 17, 2004, at a distance of 8.3 million kilometers (5.2 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 72 degrees. The image scale is 50 kilometers (31 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
A single Huygens Descent Imager/ Spectral Radiometer (DISR) instrument image shows two new features on the surface of Titan. A bright linear feature suggests an area where water ice may have been extruded onto the surface. Also visible are short, stubby dark channels that may have been formed by 'springs' of liquid methane rather than methane 'rain.'
The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer is one of two NASA instruments on the probe.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Descent Imager/Spectral team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer visit http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/.
Titan's high haze layers are amazing. Cassini captured this detailed view of the relatively faint haze in Titan's upper atmosphere as it receded from its close encounter on March 31, 2005. Similar examples of such complex structures in Titan's haze have been observed previously by Cassini.
These observations will help reveal the processes responsible for forming the numerous layers observed and how the structure and behavior of the layers change on daily and seasonal time scales.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers and at a distance of 102,320 kilometers (63,579 miles) from Titan. Image scale is about 600 meters (1,970 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Sunlight scatters through Titan's atmosphere, illuminating high hazes and bathing the entire moon in a soft glow.
This high phase angle view of Titan was acquired from 21 degrees below the smoggy moon's equator. The thin, detached haze layer that extends all the way around Titan is faintly visible.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on May 12, 2007 at a distance of approximately 305,000 kilometers (190,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 146 degrees. Image scale is 18 kilometers (11 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This mosaic of three frames from the Huygens Descent Imager/ Spectral Radiometer (DISR) instrument provides unprecedented detail of the high ridge area including the flow down into a major river channel from different sources.
The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer is one of two NASA instruments on the probe.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Descent Imager/Spectral team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer visit http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/.
This map of Titan's surface illustrates the regions that will be imaged by the Cassini spacecraft during the spacecraft's second close flyby of Titan on Dec. 13, 2004.
The colored lines delineate the regions that will be imaged at differing resolutions. The lower-resolution imaging sequences (outlined in blue) are designed to study the atmosphere, clouds, and surface in a variety of spectral filters, and to make movies of the evolution of clouds over time scales of hours. Other areas have been specifically targeted for moderate and high resolution mosaicking of surface features. These include the site where the European Space Agency's Huygens probe is predicted to touch down in mid-January (marked with the yellow X), part of the bright region named Xanadu (easternmost extent of the coverage area), and a boundary between dark and bright regions. The map shows only brightness variations on Titan's surface. (The illumination is such that there is no shading due to topographic variations). Previous observations indicate that due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few to five times the actual pixel scale labeled on the map.
The December encounter is similar in geometry to the first close Titan flyby in October (see PIA06116), so Cassini scientists have taken advantage of this to retarget some of the same areas in order to look for changes and to cover new territory as well. This is the reason for the rather irregular shape of the green outline.
The map was made from global images taken in June 2004 at image scales of 35 to 88 kilometers (22 to 55 miles) per pixel and from south polar coverage from July 2004 at an image scale of 2 kilometers (1.3 miles) per pixel. The images were obtained using a narrow band filter centered at 938 nanometers - a near-infrared wavelength (invisible to the human eye) that can penetrate Titan's atmosphere to the surface. The images have been processed to enhance surface details.
It is currently northern winter on Titan, so Titan's high northern latitudes are not illuminated, resulting in the jagged upper boundary. Clouds near the south pole (see PIA06110) have also been removed (south of minus 75 degrees).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This composite was produced from images returned yesterday, January 14, 2005, by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during its successful descent to land on Titan. It shows the boundary between the lighter-colored uplifted terrain, marked with what appear to be drainage channels, and darker lower areas.
These images were taken from an altitude of about 8 kilometers (about 5 miles) and a resolution of about 20 meters (about 65 feet) per pixel. The images were taken by the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer, one of two NASA instruments on the probe.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Descent Imager/Spectral team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
This fascinating movie from Cassini shows the changing shapes of features in the outer haze layers of Titan's atmosphere.
The original movie was created from 36 images taken over the course of three hours as Cassini receded from Titan, following its flyby on March 31, 2005. These observations were made about four and a half to eight hours after Cassini's closest approach. Additional frames were inserted between the 36 Cassini images in order to smooth the movement of the atmosphere -- a scheme called interpolation -- for a total of 71 frames in the released movie.
The most obvious changes in this movie occur in the bright layers in the middle of the arc, near the one o'clock position, where hazy filaments appear to flow and merge. Near the 12 o'clock position there is wave motion from right to left.
The changing features represent a great deal of dynamic activity high in this cold, hazy atmosphere. They resemble the activity observed during Cassini's first Titan encounter.
The images for this movie were taken by the Cassini wide-angle camera on April 1, 2005, using a filter sensitive to visible violet light and were acquired at distances ranging from approximately 99,000 to 155,000 kilometers (62,000 to 96,000 miles) from Titan. Resolution in the images changes from 6 to 9 kilometers (4 to 6 miles) per pixel during the movie. The frames have been scaled so that Titan does not appear to shrink in size as Cassini moves away.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
With its thick, distended atmosphere, Titan's orange globe shines softly, encircled by a thin halo of purple light-scattering haze.
Images taken using blue, green and red spectral filters were used to create this enhanced-color view; the color images were combined with an ultraviolet view that makes the high-altitude, detached layer of haze visible. The ultraviolet part of the composite image was given a purplish hue to match the bluish-purple color of the upper atmospheric haze seen in visible light.
Small particles that populate high hazes in Titan's atmosphere scatter short wavelengths more efficiently than longer visible or infrared wavelengths, so the best possible observations of the detached layer are made in ultraviolet light.
The images in this view were taken by the Cassini narrow-angle camera on May 5, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Titan and at a sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 137 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This complex area of hilly terrain and erosional channels is located atop Xanadu, the continent-sized region on Saturn's moon Titan. The image was captured by the Cassini Titan Radar Mapper on April 30, 2006. It shows details as small as 350 meters (1148 feet). Each side of the picture covers 200 kilometers (124 miles).
Chains of hills or mountains are located near the bottom of the image, appearing bright on their north side (toward the top in this image). Extending further north is a drainage region where liquids flowed, eroding the presumably water-ice bedrock of Xanadu. Careful inspection reveals a series of faint drainage channels, some of which appear to empty into the dark region near the top of the image. Liquid methane might be fed from springs within Xanadu or by occasional rainfall suspected to occur on Titan. There is evidence for this rainfall in images taken by the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer camera on the Huygens probe as it landed, well to the west of this area, on January 14, 2005 (see PIA07238).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
This synthetic aperture radar image was obtained by the Cassini spacecraft on its recent pass by Titan's south pole on Dec. 20, 2007.
This portion of the (T39) swath is of the region extending from about 84 degrees south to the south pole, with a length of approximately 760 kilometers (470 miles) and width of 150 to 170 kilometers (90 to 100 miles). The polar projection of this image is at 128 pixels per degree, or approximately 351 meters per pixel (1,150 feet per pixel), and the radar illumination is from the lower left with incidence angles from about 22 to 38 degrees.
This image covers the south pole of Titan, which can be seen as a region of broad smooth valleys surrounded by rugged terrain. Also seen in this image are two features interpreted as lakes, the larger of which may correspond to dark features first identified by the imaging science subsystem in June 2005 (See PIA06240). Their very dark appearance in the radar image indicates that they are probably filled with liquid methane. Other apparently empty lake basins are seen elsewhere in the radar swath. Based on this swath, there appear to be fewer lakes near the south pole than seen in a typical region near the north pole (for example, see PIA10008). Since Titan is currently in its late summer season in the southern hemisphere, this interpretation is consistent with a previously proposed theory that methane fills the lakes during the winter and evaporates during the summer, leaving them dry until the next fall.
Intensity in this colorized image is proportional to how much radar brightness is returned, or more specifically, the logarithm of the radar backscatter cross-section. The colors are not a representation of what the human eye would see. The lakes, darker than the surrounding terrain, are emphasized here by tinting regions of low backscatter in blue. Radar-brighter regions are shown in tan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Voir l'image PIA10218: Radar Images Titan's South Pole sur le site de la NASA.
Images recorded by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe descent imager/spectral radiometer between 11 and 5 miles (17 and 8 kilometers) were assembled to produce this panoramic mosaic. The probe ground track is indicated as points in white. North is up. Narrow dark linear markings, interpreted as channels, cut through the brighter terrain. The complex channel network implies precipitation (likely as methane "rain") and possibly springs. The circle indicates the outline of the low-altitude panorama shown in PIA06439).
The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
This global infrared map of Titan was composed with data from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer taken during the last two Titan flybys, on Dec. 26, 2005, and Jan. 15, 2006.
The map was constructed from false-color images taken at wavelengths of 1.6 microns shown in blue, 2.01 microns in green, and 5 microns in red. All three images are of reflected sunlight.
The viewing geometry of the December flyby is roughly on the opposite hemisphere of the flyby in January. There are several important features to note in the map. First, the globe of Titan exhibits two major types of terrain, one is very bright, and a darker one seems to be concentrated near the equator. Titan also has two very bright regions, the large one known as Tui Reggio, located at approximately 25 degrees south latitude and 130 degrees west longitude, and the other as Hotei Arcus, at 20 degrees south latitude and 80 degrees west longitude. These regions are thought to be surface deposits, probably of volcanic origin, and may be water and/or carbon dioxide frozen from the volcanic vapor. The western margins of Tui Reggio have a complex flow-like structure consistent with eruptive phenomena. The reddish feature at the south pole is Titan's south polar cloud system, which was very bright during the December flyby. The impact crater Sinlap is clearly visible at approximately latitude 13 degrees north and longitude 16 degrees west. The poorly resolved regions between longitudes of 30 degrees and 150 degrees east will be filled in during subsequent flybys.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.
This radar image, obtained by Cassini's radar instrument during a near-polar flyby on Feb. 22, 2007, shows dunes surrounding a bright feature on Saturn's moon Titan.
Dunes have been previously seen on Titan, so far concentrated near the equator. They are thought to be composed of small hydrocarbon or water ice particles-- probably about 250 microns in diameter, similar to sand grains on Earth. These are formed into dunes by the prevailing west-to-east surface winds. Because of the shape and length of the dunes, they are probably "longitudinal" (lying in the same direction as the average wind) rather than transverse dunes, which form across the wind and are more common on Earth.
There are several kinds of interaction between the dunes and the brighter features in this image. At the left, the dunes seem to be covering the bright material, while at the center and right, they seem to be terminated against it. At the lower center and lower right, they flow around it (see also PIA08738 and PIA08454). These various interactions will help us to determine the nature of both of these features.
This image was taken in synthetic aperture mode at 700-meter (2,300-foot) resolution. North is toward the left. The image is centered at about 3.5 degrees south latitude and 37.3 degrees west longitude.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
The Cassini spacecraft peers at the smooth globe of Titan, wrapped in its photochemical haze.
The moon's thin, detached, high-altitude haze layer is best viewed at shorter wavelengths of light, as in this violet light image and ultraviolet views (see PIA08868).
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, 3,200 miles across) is up.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 22, 2008. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 214,000 kilometers (133,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 119 degrees. Image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09869: Violet Titan sur le site de la NASA.
Despite the views of the surface of Saturn's Titan moon provided by the Cassini spacecraft, the moon remains inscrutable to the human eye. Images taken with the narrow angle camera using red, green and blue color filters were combined to create this view.
In true-color images taken in visible wavelengths, Titan's photochemical smog, rich in organic material, gives the moon a smooth, featureless, orange glow.
The Cassini orbiter carries specially designed spectral filters that can pierce Titan's veil. Furthermore, its piggybacked Huygens probe will descend through the atmosphere in early 2005, giving an up-close-and-personal look at this mysterious orange moon.
The images making up this color view were obtained at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 67 degrees, and from a distance of approximately 13.1 million kilometers (8.2 million miles) on June 10, 2004. The image scale is approximately 79 kilometers (49 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Cassini's finely-tuned vision reveals hazes high in the skies over Titan in this narrow angle camera image taken by the Cassini spacecraft on May 22, 2004. Here the northern hemisphere is notably brighter than the southern hemisphere. This trait was noticed in images returned by the Voyager spacecraft, but the effect is presently reversed, North to South, as Titan is currently experiencing opposite seasons from those during the Voyager epoch 23 years ago.
The image was taken from a distance of 21.7 million kilometers (13.5 million miles) from Saturn through a filter sensitive to strong absorption by methane gas (centered at 889 nanometers). The image scale is 129 kilometers (80 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This map illustrates the planned imaging coverage for the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer, onboard the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during the probe's descent toward Titan's surface on Jan. 14, 2005. The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer is one of two NASA instruments on the probe.
The colored lines delineate regions that will be imaged at different resolutions as the probe descends. On each map, the site where Huygens is predicted to land is marked with a yellow dot. This area is in a boundary between dark and bright regions.
This map was made from the images taken by the Cassini spacecraft cameras on Oct. 26, 2004, at image scales of 4 to 6 kilometers (2.5 to 3.7 miles) per pixel. The images were obtained using a narrow band filter centered at 938 nanometers -- a near-infrared wavelength (invisible to the human eye) at which light can penetrate Titan's atmosphere to reach the surface and return through the atmosphere to be detected by the camera. The images have been processed to enhance surface details. Only brightness variations on Titan's surface are seen; the illumination is such that there is no shading due to topographic variations.
For about two hours, the probe will fall by parachute from an altitude of 160 kilometers (99 miles) to Titan's surface. During the descent the camera on the probe and five other science instruments will send data about the moon's atmosphere and surface back to the Cassini spacecraft for relay to Earth. The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer will take pictures as the probe slowly spins, and some these will be made into panoramic views of Titan's surface.
This map shows the planned coverage by the medium- and high-resolution. PIA06173 shows expected coverage by the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer side-looking imager and two downward-looking imagers - one providing medium-resolution and the other high-resolution coverage.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. The Descent Imager/Spectral team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This composite of 24 images from the Cassini spacecraft shows multiple layers in Titan's stratospheric haze. The most prominent layer is located about 500 kilometers (300 miles) above the surface and is seen at all latitudes, encircling the moon. The material in this layer is probably a condensed substance, possibly water ice.
Several other layers are most apparent in the north polar hood (at top), but this view also shows some at other latitudes. The mechanisms that produce these layers are not understood, but waves in the atmosphere are thought to play a significant role.
The images in this composite were taken over a period of 23 minutes. The images were processed to enhance fine detail and then were combined to create this view. North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up.
The images were taken in visible light with the narrow-angle camera on Jan. 27, 2006 at a distance of approximately 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 155 degrees. Image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This Cassini spacecraft view shows the interesting north-south asymmetry in Titan's atmosphere, which is thought to be a seasonal effect.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated 30 degrees to the right.
The image was taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 889 nanometers. The view was acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 4, 2007 at a distance of approximately 3 million kilometers (1.9 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 54 degrees. Image scale is 18 kilometers (11 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This map of Titan's surface illustrates the regions that will be imaged by Cassini during the spacecraft's close flyby of the smog-enshrouded moon on April 16, 2005. At closest approach, the spacecraft is expected to pass approximately 1,025 kilometers (640 miles) above the moon's surface.
The colored lines delineate the regions that will be imaged at differing resolutions.
Images from this encounter will add to those taken during the March 31, 2005, flyby and improve the moderate resolution coverage of this region. The imaging coverage will include the eastern portion of territory observed by Cassini's radar instrument in October 2004 and February 2005, and will provide a way to compare the surface as viewed by the different instruments. Such comparisons (see PIA06222) will provide insight into the nature of Titan's surface.
The higher-resolution (yellow boxes) have been spread out around a central mosaic in order to maximize coverage of this region by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer which will be observing simultaneously with the cameras of the imaging science subsystem.
The map shows only brightness variations on Titan's surface (the illumination is such that there are no shadows and no shading due to topographic variations). Previous observations indicate that, due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few times larger than the actual pixel scale labeled on the map.
The images for this global map were obtained using a narrow band filter centered at 938 nanometers-- a near-infrared wavelength (invisible to the human eye). At this wavelength, light can penetrate Titan's atmosphere to reach the surface and return through the atmosphere to be detected by the camera. The images have been processed to enhance surface details.
It is currently northern winter on Titan, so the moon's high northern latitudes are not illuminated, resulting in the lack of coverage north of 35 degrees north latitude.
At 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across, Titan is one of the solar system's largest moons.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
Like the mysterious dark markings on Mars that once haunted astronomer Percival Lowell, shadowy features and mysterious markings appear to stain the surface of puzzling Titan.
Sixteen Cassini narrow angle camera images were used to produce the surface map shown here. The images vary in scale from 88 to 35 kilometers (52 to 21 miles) per pixel. The map has a scale of 15 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel and covers Titan's surface from latitudes of about 80 degrees south to 35 degrees north. In this map, surface features as small as about 100 kilometers (60 miles) across are clearly resolved. This is an improvement of nearly a factor of three over ground-based observations of Titan, though still too poor to understand the surface in detail.
From analysis of maps such as this, it is easy to discern the characteristics of a moon's surface. The equatorial region (30 degrees south to 30 degrees north latitude) is crossed by dark markings, although they are less prominent over the bright region named "Xanadu," located near longitude 90 degrees. The map indicates that the dark markings often have relatively straight boundaries with preferred orientations - suggestive of internal, probably complex, tectonic processes. Some of the brighter, round markings might be recent impact craters, including a bright feature with rays apparently extending from it near longitude 130 degrees on the leading hemisphere of Titan.
These mapped images were taken through the methane "window" at 938 nanometers with a polarizing filter. This combination was designed specifically to reduce the obscuration by atmospheric haze. This method for seeing Titan's surface was explained in an earlier release about Titan (see PIA06071). Cassini took the images between June 2 and June 22, 2004, at distances ranging from 14.8 million kilometers (9.2 million miles) to 5.9 million kilometers (3.7 million miles) from Titan.
Cassini will make 45 close passes by Titan over the next four years. On July 2, 2004, Cassini will make a more-distant pass over Titan's South Pole, returning images that are 17 times higher in resolution than the best images comprising this map.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Titan's smoggy atmosphere glows brilliantly in scattered sunlight, creating a thin, gleaming crescent beyond Saturn's rings. At this slight angle above the ringplane, the thin F ring shines brightly. Light from Titan's eastern and western limbs (edges) penetrates the Cassini Division, which looks like a thin gap from this angle.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 18, 2006, at a distance of approximately 1 million kilometers (600,000 miles) from Saturn. Planet-sized Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) was 2.2 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Cassini at that time. The image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel on Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
As it approached Titan for yet another revealing encounter, the Cassini spacecraft acquired this image showing terrain on the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere.
Prominent dark areas found in the moon's equatorial region appear to contain vast and continuous dune fields, discovered by the Cassini Radar experiment and likely composed of particles that drop from Titan's unique, smoggy atmosphere. The dark regions seen here are provisionally named Aaru and Senkyo (at right), with parts of western Fensal and Aztlan showing at left, near the terminator.
Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 752 nanometers. The view was obtained on July 2, 2006 at a distance of approximately 163,000 kilometers (101,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 62 degrees. Image scale is 19 kilometers (12 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Titan Volcano in Several Infrared Wavelengths
Details of the circular feature, which scientists think is an ice volcano, which could be a source of methane in Titan's atmosphere, show up at wavelengths larger than 1.3 microns (a micron is one-millionth of a meter; a meter is 39 inches).
The first six panels are images of the feature taken in six infrared windows. Images made up of two colors (ratio images) are represented in order to visualize compositional variations, which appear to be slight. The last panel is a color composite image (red, 2.75 micron; green, 2.0 micron; blue, 1.6 micron). These images were acquired with Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, designed to peer through Titan's thick haze to the surface.
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is the only known moon to have a significant atmosphere, composed primarily of nitrogen, with methane (methane is about 2 to 3 percent) as the largest remaining component. One goal of the Cassini mission is to find an explanation for what is replenishing and maintaining this atmosphere. This dense atmosphere makes the surface very difficult to study with visible-light cameras, but infrared instruments like the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer can peer through the haze. Infrared images provide information about both the composition and the shape of the area studied.
These images were taken during Cassini's Oct. 26, 2004, flyby of Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.
Encircled in purple stratospheric haze, Titan appears as a softly glowing sphere in this colorized image taken one day after Cassini’s first flyby of the moon on July 2, 2004.
This image shows a thin, detached haze layer that appears to float above the main atmospheric haze. Because of its thinness, the high haze layer is best seen at the moon’s limb. NASA's Voyager spacecraft detected such detached haze layers on Titan during their flybys in the early 1980s.
The image, which shows Titan’s southern polar region, was taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers. The image has been false-colored to approximate what the human eye might see were our vision able to extend into the ultraviolet: The globe of Titan retains the pale orange hue our eyes usually see, and both the main atmospheric haze and the thin detached layer have been given their natural purple color. The haze layers have been brightened for visibility.
The best possible observations of the detached layer are made in ultraviolet light because the small haze particles which populate this part of Titan’s upper atmosphere scatter short wavelengths more efficiently than longer visible or infrared wavelengths. This accounts for the bluish-purple color.
Images like this one reveal some of the key steps in the formation and evolution of Titan's haze. The process begins in the high atmosphere (at altitudes higher than 600 kilometers or 370 miles), where solar ultraviolet light breaks down methane and nitrogen molecules. The products react to form more complex organic molecules containing carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, and these in turn combine to form the very small particles seen as high hazes. The small particles stick upon collision with one another, forming larger particles which fall deeper into the atmosphere to maintain the lower main haze layer which is thick enough to obscure the surface at visible wavelengths. The altitude of the detached haze layer observed by Cassini (near 500 kilometers or 310 miles) is significantly higher than the detached haze seen by Voyager (at 300 to 350 kilometers or 185 to 215 miles). The upward shift in haze altitude from Voyager to Cassini suggests the possibility of seasonality in haze production or atmospheric circulation strength.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 3, 2004, at a distance of about 789,000 kilometers (491,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 114 degrees. The image scale is 4.7 kilometers (2.9 miles) per pixel.
[This caption was modified on March 16, 2005.]
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
The Cassini spacecraft looks toward Titan and the large, equatorial bright region at center called Adiri. The Huygens probe landing site is in view here, east of Adiri.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated 21 degrees to the left.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Nov. 19, 2007 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 939 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 115,000 kilometers (71,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 7 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel. Due to scattering of light by Titan's hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few times larger than the actual pixel scale.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09804: Adiri in View sur le site de la NASA.
Three very different worlds crowd the frame in this unique view from the Cassini spacecraft, which although partly overexposed, provides a splendid look at several major targets of interest for the mission.
Titan (at the top) has a thick, hazy atmosphere. Cassini has observed it to be a world where complex geological and atmospheric processes are occurring. At 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across, it is Saturn's largest moon, and is the second largest moon in the solar system, after Jupiter's moon Ganymede (5,262 kilometers, or 3,270 miles across).
Tethys (at the bottom) has been battered by impacts over the eons, and some of its many craters are visible in this image. Tethys (1,071 kilometers, or 665 miles across) is one of Saturn's major icy moons, having a density close to that of water. This moon shows evidence that icy tectonic processes have occurred on its frozen surface, such as the immense canyon system called Ithaca Chasma.
Epimetheus (center) is one of Saturn's "ring moons": small, porous bodies that orbit within or just beyond the rings. Cassini acquired the closest-ever view of cratered Epimetheus (116 kilometers, or 72 miles across) in March, 2005.
Also near center are Saturn's F ring and the outer edge of the A ring to the left. In addition to the F ring's usually bright core, several other ringlets are resolved here, giving the ring a soft, wispy character that shows contrast with the more sharply defined A ring.
Appearances can be deceiving in two dimensional images like this one where it is difficult to tell which objects are in the foreground and which are farther away. In this scene, Tethys is the closest object to Cassini, at 1.2 million kilometers (700,000 miles) away. Epimetheus is on the near side of the rings and is 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) distant. The giant moon Titan is 2.7 million kilometers (1.7 million miles) away, more than twice as far from Cassini as Tethys.
This view is a mosaic of two images taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 19, 2005. The image scale in the scene ranges from 16 kilometers (10 miles) per pixel on Titan to 7 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel on Tethys.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
The Cassini spacecraft peeks through the murk of Titan's thick atmosphere in a search for clouds.
Although there are no obvious cloud features in this view, bright cloud streaks have occasionally been seen by Cassini and Earth-based telescopes in the region seen here toward the bottom of Titan's disk. Repeated monitoring observations like this one help scientists build an understanding of Titan's weather and the various climate processes operating on this frigid, but remarkably Earth-like moon.
This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across). North is up and rotated 35 degrees to the left.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 25, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.7 million kilometers (1 million miles) from Titan. Image scale is 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10503: Watching for Clouds sur le site de la NASA.
This sequence of images illustrates the evolution of a field of clouds near Titan's south pole over a period of almost five hours. The images were acquired on July 2, 2004, by NASA's Cassini spacecraft at ranges of 364,000 to 339,000 kilometers (226,170 to 210,600 miles). These bright clouds, believed to be composed of methane, appear in generally the same area where Earth-based astronomers have previously detected clouds. Cassini also saw clouds in this region during its approach to Saturn.
The pixel scale of these images ranges from 2.2 to 2.0 kilometers per pixel (1.4 to 1.2 miles per pixel). The smallest features that can be discerned in the clouds are roughly 10 kilometers ( 6 miles) across.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This composite image, composed of two images taken with Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, shows a crescent view of Saturn's moon Titan.
The data were obtained during a flyby on July 22, 2006, at a distance of 15,700 kilometers (9,700 miles) from Titan. The image was constructed from images taken at wavelengths of 1.26 microns shown in blue, 2 microns shown in green, and 5 microns shown in red.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona where this image was produced.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.
As Cassini continues its reconnoitering flybys of Titan, the imaging science team continues to improve its ability to tease out surface details hidden in the unprocessed images. This mosaic provides the best view yet obtained by Cassini's cameras, showing terrain on the moon's sub-Saturn hemisphere -- the side of the moon that always faces toward Saturn.
This mosaic has better resolution, both in pixel scale and from improved signal-to-noise, compared to previous views of the area. "Signal-to-noise" is a term scientists use to refer to the amount of meaningful or useful information (signal) in their data versus the amount of background noise. A higher signal-to-noise ratio yields sharper, clearer views of Titan's surface.
The view is centered on terrain in the Fensal-Aztlan region on Titan, at 0.03 degrees south latitude, 22.18 degrees west longitude. The mosaic covers an area 3,500 kilometers (2,180 miles) north to south and 3,600 kilometers (2,240 miles) west to east. North is up.
The mosaic consists of 17 frames taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. Each frame was created by combining and specially processing four individual images of the same region of Titan's surface. The frames were then sharpened to improve visibility of surface features.
The images in this mosaic were taken using the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at distances ranging from 81,200 to 119,500 kilometers (50,500 to 74,300 miles) and at a sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of about 25 degrees.
The original image scale ranged from 470 to 700 meters (1,540 to 2,300 feet) per pixel. Because the actual resolution on Titan is a few times the pixel scale, this orthographic projection mosaic was scaled to 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This mosaic of images taken at 28 footprints shows the regional coverage taken during Cassini's second encounter of Titan on Dec. 13, 2004.
Cutting through the middle of the image is a sharp boundary between the bright region known as Xanadu Regio on the right and dark terrain to the left. This mosaic includes some areas seen at regional scales in October 2004 (see PIA 06124), as well as additional areas to the north and east not seen during that flyby. Among the new features seen in this mosaic is a strangely shaped bright feature near the center of the image as well as clouds near the bottom of the image (see PIA 06110).
The northern portion of the bright/dark boundary appears to be more complex than the arching and sharp boundary seen farther to the south. Cassini scientists continue to examine images such as this to determine the cause of this terrain.
The images in this mosaic have been processed to enhance surface features and sharpen brightness variations. All images were taken at a special filter in the near-infrared at 938 nanometers that provides the camera's best view of Titan's surface features. The images making up this mosaic were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera at distances ranging from 80,900 to 42,400 kilometers (50,300 to 26,300 miles) and have pixel scales ranging from 930 to 475 meters (3,050 to 1,560 feet). This mosaic is scaled to 1.2 kilometers (0.75 miles) per pixel and is centered at 5 degrees south latitude, 138 degrees west longitude on Titan. Black areas on this mosaic represent areas where images were not taken during this observation or were not returned from Cassini.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
JPL manages the Voyager project for NASA's Office of Space Science.
Voir l'image PIA01533: Titan Haze sur le site de la NASA.
Although this image is centered on the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Titan, here the sun illuminates mainly the trailing hemisphere of Saturn's largest moon.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 9, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.774 million kilometers (1.102 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 56 degrees. Image scale is 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10536: Saturn's View of Titan's Trailing Hemisphere sur le site de la NASA.
This north polar image of Titan was acquired by Cassini’s radar instrument on May 12, 2007.
Stretching from 69 degrees north, 329 degrees west to 33 degrees north, 227 degrees west, this swath gently curves from west-to-east at the left end to north-to-south at the right. It is more than 2,700 kilometers (1,678 miles) long and varies from 200 to 500 kilometers (124 to 310 miles) in width, covering the southern extreme of a large dark area previously imaged by the Imaging Science Subsystem (see PIA08365). The thin white stripe at immediate left is an artifact related to the instrument’s multi-beam operation; throughout the swath there are some near-vertical stripes that are also artifacts.
As displayed here, the extreme left end of the image shows the west margin of a dark area interpreted to be a lake of liquid methane and probably ethane, with obvious shore-like features, such as bays, inlets and islands. Radar images show smooth areas as dark, and this lake is among the darkest areas seen so far on Titan. The eastern margin of the lake is similarly complex, and some of the shoreline features seem related to ridges and lower topography on the shore, as if the liquid in the lake has filled lower-lying areas between ridges. Some of these channels drain into the lake, while others go into a slightly brighter, more uniform area that may be connected to the lake just off the lower edge of the image (for more details on this area, see PIA09211). Farther to the right, moving southward, a complex region of ridges and channels transitions to more subdued landforms with circular or lobate features, some of which have raised rims. The terrain toward the right of the image is rougher, with topographic depressions that resemble dried lakebeds, lacking the dark material seen in the lakes farther north. Toward the right end of the image, farthest from the north pole, a series of long, low depressions is seen against a relatively dark background.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
These three pictures were created from a sequence of images acquired by Cassini's imaging science subsystem on Oct. 25, 2004, 38 hours before its closest approach to Titan. They illustrate how the details of Titan's surface can be revealed through image processing techniques.
The picture on the left is a single image that has undergone only basic cleaning of corrupted pixels and imperfections in the camera's charge coupled device, a light-sensitive detector similar to those found in digital cameras. In the middle frame, multiple images were used to enhance the contrast detected from Titan's surface and to reduce the blurring effect of atmospheric haze. The picture on the right has been further processed to sharpen the edges of features.
The processed images reveal sharp boundaries between dark and light regions on the surface; there are no shadows produced by topography in these images. The bright area on the center right is Xanadu, a region that has been observed previously from Earth and by Cassini. To the west of Xanadu lies an area of dark material that completely surrounds brighter features in some places. Narrow linear features, both dark and bright, can also be seen. It is not clear what geologic processes created these features, although it seems clear that the surface is being shaped by more than impact craters alone. The very bright features near Titan's south pole are clouds similar to those observed during the distant Cassini flyby on July 2, 2004.
The region on the left side of these images will be targeted by higher-resolution observations as Cassini passes close to Titan on Oct. 26, 2004.
All of these images were acquired by Cassini on Oct. 25, 2004, at an altitude of 702,000 kilometers (436,000 miles) and a pixel scale of 4.2 kilometers (2.6 miles). The Sun was illuminating Titan from nearly behind the spacecraft.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
It's hard not to speculate about the origins of the narrow, dark features seen in Cassini's new images of Titan's surface. They tantalize the viewer, resembling the dark channels seen elsewhere on Titan, but are just at the limits of resolution of the images (a few kilometers) -- too close to identify their true nature.
During the two most recent flybys of Titan, on March 31 and April 16, 2005, Cassini captured a number of images of the hemisphere of Titan that faces Saturn. The image at the left is taken from a mosaic of images obtained in March 2005 (see PIA06222) and shows the location of the frame at the right. The view at the right, taken during the most recent Titan flyby, shows a close-up of the eastern portion of a large, bright feature.
The resolution is somewhat degraded in this frame due to the low contrast of the terrain, but several narrow, dark and branching features, which are suggestive of channels, can be discerned.
The view at the left consists of five images that have been added together and enhanced to bring out surface detail and to reduce noise, though some camera artifacts remain.
These images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers -- considered to be the imaging science subsystem's best spectral filter for observing the surface of Titan. This view was acquired from a distance of 40,000 kilometers (24,900 miles). The pixel scale of this image is 470 meters (0.3 miles) per pixel, although the actual resolution is likely to be several times larger.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
A global detached haze layer and discrete cloud-like features high above Titan's northern terminator (day-night transition) are visible in this image acquired on October 24, 2004, as the Cassini spacecraft neared its first close encounter with Titan. This full disk view of Titan is a colorized version of the ultraviolet image released on October 25, 2004 (PIA06120). The globe of Titan and the haze have been given colors that are close to what the natural colors are believed to be.
The image was acquired at a distance of about 1 million kilometers (621,371 miles) in a near ultraviolet filter that is sensitive to scattering by small particles. The Sun preferentially illuminates the southern hemisphere at this time; the north polar region is in darkness. The well-known global detached haze layer, hundreds of kilometers above Titan's surface, is produced by photochemical reactions and visible as a thin ring of bright material around the entire planet. At the northern high-latitude edge of the image, additional striations are visible, caused by particulates that are high enough to be illuminated by the Sun even though the surface directly below is in darkness. These striations may simply be caused by a wave propagating through the detached haze, or they may be evidence of additional regional haze or cloud layers not present at other latitudes.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Images of Titan's surface from Cassini's April 16, 2005 flyby continue to reveal the incredibly intricate nature of the boundaries between dark and bright material.
During the two most recent flybys of Titan, on March 31 and April 16, 2005, Cassini captured a number of images of the hemisphere of Titan that faces Saturn. The mosaic at the right consists of four narrow-angle camera frames taken during the April flyby and highlights intriguing features seen along a boundary between bright and dark terrain. The image at the left shows the location of this mosaic within a lower resolution mosaic of images taken during the March 2005 flyby (see PIA06222).
The outline of the bright and dark boundary in some places suggests fluvial (river or stream) activity, particularly along the margin of the dark region that extends north near the top center of the mosaic. Along the mosaic's western edge, dark, curving and linear features can be seen running from the bright area into the dark area, similar to other channel-like features seen in previous flybys (see PIA06202).
Data taken by the synthetic aperture radar experiment during the February 2005 flyby of Titan covers much of the region shown in the mosaic at right, particularly along its northern and western edges. For example, the bright oval-shaped feature (34 kilometers, or 21 miles across) near the lower right corner of the mosaic corresponds to the bright feature seen in the lower left corner of a previously released radar image from February (see PIA07368). Comparing the same features as seen by different instruments will be important in understanding how these features formed. Furthermore, it will help to constrain what exactly each instrument is detecting (i.e., surface roughness vs. brightness, surface vs. subsurface, topographic effects, etc.).
The new mosaic at the right is centered on 11 degrees north latitude, 27 degrees west longitude. The image has been rotated so that north is up. Each of the four frames consists of five individual images that have been added together and enhanced to bring out surface detail and reduce noise, although some camera artifacts remain.
These images were taken using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers -- considered to be the imaging science subsystem's best spectral filter for observing the surface of Titan. This view was acquired at distances ranging from approximately 57,000 to 46,000 kilometers (35,400 to 28,600 miles). The pixel scale ranges from 670 to 550 meters (0.4 to 0.3 miles) per pixel, although the actual resolution is likely to be several times larger.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
On May 12, 2007, Cassini completed its 31st flyby of Saturn's moon Titan, which the team calls T30. The radar instrument obtained this image showing the coastline and numerous island groups of a portion of a large sea, consistent with the larger sea seen by the Cassini imaging instrument (see http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08930).
Like other bodies of liquid seen on Titan, this feature reveals channels, islands, bays, and other features typical of terrestrial coastlines, and the liquid, most likely a combination of methane and ethane, appears very dark to the radar instrument. What is striking about this portion of the sea compared to other liquid bodies on Titan is the relative absence of brighter regions within it, suggesting that the depth of the liquid here exceeds tens of meters (tens of yards). Of particular note is the presence of isolated islands, which follow the same direction as the peninsula to their lower right, suggesting that they may be part of a mountain ridgeline that has been flooded. This is analogous to, for example, Catalina Island off the coast of Southern California.
The image as shown is about 160 kilometers (100 miles) by 270 kilometers (170 miles) at 300-meter (980-foot) resolution. The image is centered near 70 degrees north latitude and 310 west longitude.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
The "H"-shaped region Fensal-Aztlan is faintly visible on Saturn's murky moon Titan in this enhanced clear-filter view from Cassini.
While most of the light passing through the clear filters is visible light, a small portion of the light is in the treasured infrared windows that allow views down to the moon's frigid surface.
At the upper left, dark wavelike features in the atmosphere encircle the moon's north pole.
The view shows principally the Saturn-facing hemisphere on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across). North is up and rotated 35 degrees to the left.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 7, 2005, at a distance of approximately 2.4 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 33 degrees. The image scale is 14 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
A set of three parallel ridges was seen by the Cassini spacecraft's radar instrument during the latest Titan flyby on May 12, 2008. This combination is unlikely to be a coincidence -- the best explanation for these features is that they are tilted or separated blocks of broken or faulted crust, now exposed as high ridges. Their regular spacing is typical of regions that have been compressed or extended over large areas; as an example, the western United States Basin and Range Province was formed by extension. Such interactions are called tectonics, although they do not happen in the same way as plate tectonics, which is a process unique to Earth.
The ridges, which appear on the left side of the image, are rugged features and are elevated above surrounding terrain. The brightness patterns mean that the materials are fractured or blocky at the radar wavelength (2.17 centimeters, or about 1 inch). Along the south sides of the ridges are prominent cliffs, or scarps, present as thin, radar-dark lines trending west-to-east, and interpreted as faults. These features are dark due to shadowing from the radar illumination, and have heights up to a few hundred meters (several hundred feet), based on preliminary estimates of slopes.
The area shown here is located in the mountainous region called Xanadu. The ridges are similar in many ways to mountain chains seen at similar latitude but about 90 degrees to the west, just west of Shangri-La (observed during a flyby in October 2005, PIA08454). Both regions have mountain chains or ridges that are oriented west-to-east and are spaced about 50 kilometers (30 miles) apart. This indicates tectonic forces have acted in a north to south direction at Titan's equatorial region and have resulted in regular effects in Titan's crust, evidence that will help scientists better understand Titan's crust and interior.
Other linear features, probably related to the formation of the ridges, and circular features, perhaps eroded impact craters now filled with radar-dark (smooth) material, are also seen in the image. The largest circular feature, at bottom center, is about 20 km in diameter.
The image is centered at 2 degrees south, 127 degrees west and was obtained on May 12, 2008, with a resolution of about 300 meters (980 feet). The open arrow indicates the direction of radar illumination. The dashed white line in the upper portion is an artifact of the SAR processing and will be removed in later versions.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/.
Voir l'image PIA10654: Tectonics on Titan sur le site de la NASA.
In contrast to (PIA03564), this bright terrain is cut by channels that are variable in width; they form both radial and branching networks. Such patterns are reminiscent of networks formed by rainfall on Earth.
At the bottom of the frame, the channels radiate from a possible source into a dark, smooth region that seems flatter and more plains-like. One interpretation is that the higher, rougher terrain has been cleansed of organic debris and eroded by methane rainfall. The removed material has then been deposited into the lower plains.
This Cassini Synthetic Aperture Radar image of Titan was taken on Sept. 7, 2005, at a distance of 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) from Titan. It is located near 48 degrees south latitude, 14 degrees west longitude and extends about 240 kilometers (150 miles) right to left.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
This map of a portion of the surface of Saturn's moon Titan shows predictions for the areas that will be covered by selected combinations of images anticipated from the camera on the Huygens probe as it descends through Titan's atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005. The map is made from data acquired by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer aboard the Cassini orbiter during the orbiter's flyby of Titan in October 2004. Cassini released the Huygens probe in December 2004.
The octagons indicate anticipated fields of view of panoramic mosaics of images taken by Huygens' descent imager and spectral radiometer instrument as the probe reaches certain altitudes during its descent. This map shows the footprints for mosaics to be assembled from 36 individual images at each altitude, with the field of view cut off at 75 degrees from straight down although the actual images will extend all the way to the hazy horizon. Each mosaic made this way will be about 1,300 by 1,300 pixels.
The largest octagon (in red) is about 1,120 kilometers (696 miles) across and represents the field of view for the mosaic of images taken at an altitude of 150 kilometers (93 miles). From that height, individual pixels in the center of the image will be about 150 meters (492 feet) across, though haze between the ground and the camera at that height will likely degrade the resolution in those images. The progressively smaller octagons are the anticipated fields of view from altitudes of 90 kilometers (60 miles), 50 kilometers (30 miles) and 30 kilometers (19 miles). In all, the camera is expected to acquire panoramic mosaics at a total of 20 different altitudes from 150 kilometers (93 miles) down to about 3 kilometers (2 miles). The pixel size in the mosaic from 3 kilometers high will be about 3 meters (10 feet) across. In addition, the camera is expected to obtain individual images down to an altitude of about 200 meters (656 feet) with pixel size as small as 20 centimeters (8 inches).
The location of the anticipated landing site is based on modeling of Titan's winds, and the actual landing site will be different if the actual winds experienced by Huygens during descent differ from this model.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the visualand infrared mapping spectrometer visit http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/.
The rapidly rotating clouds above Titan's northernmost latitudes stretch into streaks that circumscribe the pole. The ultraviolet spectral filter used to take this image allows the Cassini spacecraft to view the moon's stratosphere.
The view was taken from about 50 degrees above Titan's equatorial plane. Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized ultraviolet light. The view was captured on Feb. 25, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 63 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Annotated Fish-eye View
of Titan's Surface
This poster is a stereographic (fish-eye) projection taken with the descent imager/spectral radiometer onboard the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, when the probe was about 5 kilometers (3 miles) above Titan's surface. The images were taken on Jan. 14, 2005.
The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The descent imager/spectral radiometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
This image was taken during Cassini's third close approach to Titan on Feb. 15, 2005.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera, through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light, centered at 938 nanometers.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Scientists for the first time have made images of the surface of Saturn's giant, haze-shrouded moon, Titan. They mapped light and dark features over the surface of the satellite during nearly a complete 16-day rotation. One prominent bright area they discovered is a surface feature 2,500 miles across, about the size of the continent of Australia.
Titan, larger than Mercury and slightly smaller than Mars, is the only body in the solar system, other than Earth, that may have oceans and rainfall on its surface, albeit oceans and rain of ethane-methane rather than water. Scientists suspect that Titan's present environment—although colder than minus 289 degrees Fahrenheit, so cold that water ice would be as hard as granite—might be similar to that on Earth billions of years ago, before life began pumping oxygen into the atmosphere.
Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and his team took the images with the Hubble Space Telescope during 14 observing runs between Oct. 4 - 18. Smith announced the team's first results last week at the 26th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences in Bethesda, Md. Co-investigators on the team are Mark Lemmon, a doctoral candidate with the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory; John Caldwell of York University, Canada; Larry Sromovsky of the University of Wisconsin; and Michael Allison of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York City.
Titan's atmosphere, about four times as dense as Earth's atmosphere, is primarily nitrogen laced with such poisonous substances as methane and ethane. This thick, orange, hydrocarbon haze was impenetrable to cameras aboard the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft that flew by the Saturn system in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The haze is formed as methane in the atmosphere is destroyed by sunlight. The hydrocarbons produced by this methane destruction form a smog similar to that found over large cities, but is much thicker.
Smith's group used the Hubble Space Telescope's WideField/Planetary Camera 2 at near-infrared wavelengths (between .85 and 1.05 microns). Titan's haze is transparent enough in this wavelength range to allow mapping of surface features according to their reflectivity. Only Titan's polar regions could not be mapped this way, due to the telescope's viewing angle of the poles and the thick haze near the edge of the disk. Their image-resolution (that is, the smallest distance seen in detail) with the WFPC2 at the near-infrared wavelength is 360 miles. The 14 images processed and compiled into the Titan surface map were as "noise" free, or as free of signal interference, as the space telescope allows, Smith said.
Titan makes one complete orbit around Saturn in 16 days, roughly the duration of the imaging project. Scientists have suspected that Titan's rotation also takes 16 days, so that the same hemisphere of Titan always faces Saturn, just as the same hemisphere of the Earth's moon always faces the Earth. Recent observations by Lemmon and colleagues at the University of Arizona confirm this true.
It's too soon to conclude much about what the dark and bright areas in the Hubble Space Telescope images are—continents, oceans, impact craters or other features, Smith said. Scientists have long suspected that Titan's surface was covered with a global ehtane-methane ocean. The new images show that there is at least some solid surface.
Smith's team made a total 50 images of Titan last month in their program, a project to search for small scale features in Titan's lower atmosphere and surface. They have yet to analyze images for information about Titan's clouds and winds. That analysis could help explain if the bright areas are major impact craters in the frozen water ice-and-rock or higher-altitude features.
The images are important information for the Cassini mission, which is to launch a robotic spacecraft on a 7-year journey to Saturn in October 1997. About three weeks before Cassini's first flyby of Titan, the spacecraft is to release the European Space Agency's Huygens Probe to parachute to Titan's surface. Images like Smith's team has taken of Titan can be used to identify choice landing spots—and help engineers and scientists understand how Titan's winds will blow the parachute through the satellite's atmosphere.
UA scientists play major roles in the Cassini mission: Carolyn C. Porco, an associate professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, leads the 14-member Cassini Imaging Team. Jonathan I. Lunine, also an associate professor at the lab, is the only American selected by the European Space Agency to be on the three-member Huygens Probe interdisciplinary science team. Smith is a member of research professor Martin G. Tomasko's international team of scientists who will image the surface of Titan in visible light and in color with the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer, one of five instruments in the Huygens Probe's French, German, Italian and U.S. experiment payload. Senior research associate Lyn R. Doose is also on Tomasko's team. Lunine and LPL professor Donald M. Hunten are members of the science team for another U.S. instrument on that payload, the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. Hunten was on the original Cassini mission science definition team back in 1983.
PHOTO CAPTION: Four global projections of the HST Titan data, separated in longitude by 90 degrees. Upper left: hemisphere facing Saturn. Upper right: leading hemisphere (brightest region). Lower left: the hemisphere which never faces Saturn. Lower right: trailing hemisphere. Not that these assignments assume that the rotation is synchronous. The imaging team says its data strongly support this assumption—a longer time baseline is needed for proof. The surface near the poles is never visible to an observer in Titan's equatorial plane because of the large optical path.
The Wide Field/Planetary Camera 2 was developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center for NASA's Office of Space Science.
This image and other images and data received from the Hubble Space Telescope are posted on the World Wide Web on the Space Telescope Science Institute home page at URL http://oposite.stsci.edu/.
Voir l'image PIA01465: Hubble Observes Surface of Titan sur le site de la NASA.
Images taken during Cassini's second close approach to Titan in December 2004 have captured detailed views of the moon's intermittent clouds.
The clouds seen here are at about 38 degrees south latitude on Titan. The clouds across the middle of the frame extend about 250 kilometers (155 miles). The image scale is about .6 kilometers (.4 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
During a recent flyby of Titan, the Cassini spacecraft looked beyond the utterly overcast moon and spied clear, distant Rhea in the blackness.
Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is two-and-a-half times smaller than Earth and much less massive. This circumstance causes its atmosphere to extend to much higher altitudes above the surface than does Earth's. The Cassini spacecraft is unable to fly much closer than about 1000 kilometers (600 miles) above Titan's surface -- much closer, and the spacecraft would experience excessive torques from the atmosphere that could interfere with its ability to track the target. By contrast, the International Space Station orbits Earth at an altitude of about 350 kilometers (220 miles).
The bright, fresh crater on Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) appears near the center of the moon's crescent.
The image was taken in visible-light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on May 20, 2006, at a distance of approximately 53,000 kilometers (33,000 miles) from Titan and 873,000 kilometers (543,000 miles) from Rhea. Image scale is 320 meters (1,050 feet) per pixel on Titan and 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel on Rhea.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This view of Titan’s south pole reveals the intriguing dark feature named Ontario Lacus and a host of smaller features dotting the south polar region.
The true nature of this feature, seen here at left of center, is not yet known with absolute certainty. However, the feature’s darkness, the shore-like smoothness of its perimeter, and its presence in an area where frequent convective storm clouds have been observed by Cassini and Earth-based astronomers made it the best candidate for an open body of liquid on Titan when this image was taken in June 2005.
This interpretation has been strengthened by the sighting of features having similar morphologies in Titan’s northern polar region during the flyby of Titan in late February (see PIA08365). The possibility that these northern features, the sizes of small seas, are either completely or partially filled with liquid hydrocarbons is significantly strengthened by Cassini radar data that overlap portions of the Imaging Science Subsystem-observed northern bodies, (see PIA09182).
Previously, scientists had speculated that Ontario Lacus might simply be a broad depression filled by dark, solid hydrocarbons falling from the atmosphere onto Titan’s surface. In this case, the smoothed outline might be the result of a process unrelated to rainfall, such as a sinkhole or a volcanic caldera. However, the strong likelihood that the northern polar features are lakes and seas has made imaging scientists more confident that Ontario Lacus, and the smaller dark features dotting the southern polar region of Titan, also hold liquid. If correct, this new revelation would mean that each pole on Titan is a large wetlands area.
The feature is named for Lake Ontario because its shape and length are similar, though the Titan feature is much wider. In actual surface area, the feature is roughly the size of Lake Victoria. However, if the relative sizes of Titan and Earth are accounted for, Ontario Lacus covers roughly the same fraction of Titan as does the Black Sea on Earth.
A red cross below the center in the scene marks the pole. The brightest features seen here are methane clouds. A movie sequence showing the evolution of bright clouds in the region during the same flyby is also available (see PIA06241).
This view is a composite of three narrow-angle camera images, taken over several minutes during Cassini's distant June 6, 2005, flyby. The images were combined to produce a sharper view of Titan’s surface. The images were taken using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light. The images were acquired from approximately 450,000 kilometers (279,000 miles) from Titan. Resolution in the scene is approximately 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel. The view has been contrast enhanced to improve the overall visibility of surface features.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
As Cassini scientists work to understand the newly-exposed surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, they have found an interesting arrowhead-shaped feature, shown in the center of this synthetic aperture radar image.
The feature is approximately 30 kilometers (19 miles) across, and it is formed from two straight lines that intersect. Looking more closely, one can distinguish other linear features that seem to follow the left side of the "arrow" and perhaps interact in some way with a dark spot. Straight lines may represent fractures or faults in the icy crust, or they may form from material that has flowed or has been shaped by wind, either recently or in the distant past.
The area shown is about 115 kilometers (71 miles) wide and 170 kilometers (106 miles) high and is located near 52 degrees north latitude and 73 degrees west longitude. This radar image is part of a larger strip of data acquired on Oct. 26, 2004, as Cassini passed Titan at a distance of 1,200 kilometers (746 miles).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries. In particular, the radar antenna assembly was a contribution of the Italian Space Agency.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Annotated Mercator
Projection of Huygens's View
This poster shows a flattened (Mercator) projection of the Huygens probe's view from 10 kilometers altitude (6 miles). The images that make up this view were taken on Jan. 14, 2005, with the descent imager/spectral radiometer onboard the European Agency's Huygens probe.
The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The descent imager/spectral radiometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
Surface details on Titan are just visible in this Cassini view acquired through clear spectral filters, which permit wavelengths of light from the infrared through the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum to reach the camera's detector. Also of note are bands in the atmosphere over Titan's extreme northern latitudes.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 26, 2005, at a distance of approximately 2.4 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from Titan. The image scale is 14 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel. Contrast was enhanced in the image to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Titan's surface and atmospheric features are shown here in this processed, visible-light image taken by Cassini.
Cassini's visible-light spectral filter is sensitive to a broad range of light, from ultraviolet to near-infrared. Imaging scientists normally use a narrow-band filter centered at 938 nanometers to look at Titan's surface and cloud features (see PIA06154). Most images of Titan taken between flybys are in visible light and are used to navigate the spacecraft. Views like these demonstrate that the surface, as well atmospheric features (such as the haze banding seen near the northern limb of Titan), can indeed be seen through this filter.
Although the clear filter is not the best way to view the surface, this observation demonstrates that with sufficient processing, this filter can be used to keep track of cloud features during periods between flybys in order to provide a better understanding of the evolution of Titan's atmosphere as the moon nears spring in the northern hemisphere.
This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Feb. 10, 2004 from a distance of 2.5 million kilometers (1.6 million miles). The image scale is 15 kilometers (9.5 miles) per pixel. The image was strongly enhanced to bring out surface features. Features on the eastern side of this image will be observed at 20 times this resolution during a flyby in late March.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This lake is part of a larger image taken by the Cassini radar instrument during a flyby of Saturn's moon Titan on Sept. 23, 2006. It shows clear shorelines that are reminiscent of terrestrial lakes. With Titan's colder temperatures and hydrocarbon-rich atmosphere, however, the lakes likely contain a combination of methane and ethane, not water.
Centered near 74 degrees north, 65 degrees west longitude, this lake is roughly 20 kilometers by 25 kilometers (12 to 16 miles) across. It features several narrow or angular bays, including a broad peninsula that on Earth would be evidence that the surrounding terrain is higher and confines the liquid. Broader bays, such as the one seen at right, might result when the terrain is gentler, as for example on a beach.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Saturn's two largest moons meet in the sky in a rare embrace. Smog-enshrouded Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) glows to the left of airless Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across).
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 11, 2006 at a distance of approximately 3.6 million kilometers (2.2 million miles) from Rhea and 5.3 million kilometers (3.3 million miles) from Titan. The Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle is 157 degrees on Rhea. Image scale is 22 kilometers (13 miles) per pixel on Rhea and 32 kilometers (20 miles) per pixel on Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
During its Sept. 7, 2005, flyby of Titan, Cassini acquired images of territory on the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere that were assembled to create this mosaic.
Once known only as "the H" because the region looks something like the letter on its side, features in this region now possess provisional names assigned by the International Astronomical Union (see: http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/). The northern branch of the H is now called "Fensal," while the southern branch is known as "Aztlan."
Fensal is littered with small "islands" ranging in size from 5 to 40 kilometers (3 to 25 miles) across. These landforms currently are thought to be water ice upland areas, surrounded by shallower terrain that is filled-in with dark particulate material from the atmosphere. A few larger islands are also seen, like Bazaruto Facula (near right, containing a dark crater), and several islands in western Fensal. When viewed in images of Shangri-La (on the other side of Titan), island-like landforms of this size tend to occur in clusters with apparent preferred orientations. The small islands in Fensal appear much more scattered (and most appear roughly circular), although a few islands do have an east-west orientation to their long axis.
Aztlan, on the other hand, appears comparatively devoid of small islands, with three large islands in its western reaches, plus only a few smaller islands. The largest of these islands is called "Sotra Facula" (just right of center in the bottom left mosaic frame), and measures 240 by 120 kilometers (149 to 75 miles) across.
The territory covered by this mosaic is similar to that seen in PIA06222, which is composed of images from Cassini's March 2005 Titan flyby. However, the gaps between the images in this mosaic are smaller and fewer than in the earlier mosaic.
The mosaic is centered on a region at 7 degrees north latitude, 21 degrees west longitude on Titan.
These Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera images were taken using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. They were acquired at distances ranging from approximately 200,600 to 191,800 kilometers (124,600 to 119,200 miles) from Titan. Resolution in the images is about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) per pixel. Each image has been strongly enhanced to improve the visibility of surface features.The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
This map illustrates the planned imaging coverage for the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer, onboard the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during the probe's descent toward Titan's surface on Jan. 14, 2005. The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer is one of two NASA instruments on the probe.
The colored lines delineate regions that will be imaged at different resolutions as the probe descends. On each map, the site where Huygens is predicted to land is marked with a yellow dot. This area is in a boundary between dark and bright regions.
This map was made from the images taken by the Cassini spacecraft cameras on Oct. 26, 2004, at image scales of 4 to 6 kilometers (2.5 to 3.7 miles) per pixel. The images were obtained using a narrow band filter centered at 938 nanometers -- a near-infrared wavelength (invisible to the human eye) at which light can penetrate Titan's atmosphere to reach the surface and return through the atmosphere to be detected by the camera. The images have been processed to enhance surface details. Only brightness variations on Titan's surface are seen; the illumination is such that there is no shading due to topographic variations.
For about two hours, the probe will fall by parachute from an altitude of 160 kilometers (99 miles) to Titan's surface. During the descent the camera on the probe and five other science instruments will send data about the moon's atmosphere and surface back to the Cassini spacecraft for relay to Earth. The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer will take pictures as the probe slowly spins, and some these will be made into panoramic views of Titan's surface.
This map shows the expected coverage by the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer side-looking imager and two downward-looking imagers -- one providing medium-resolution and the other high-resolution coverage. The planned coverage by the medium- and high-resolution imagers is the subject of the second map PIA06173.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. The Descent Imager/Spectral team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Saturn's biggest and brightest moons are visible in this portrait by Cassini.
Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is Saturn's largest moon and appears at the lower left. Note that some details in the moon's smoggy atmosphere are visible here. Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) is the planet's second largest moon and is seen above center. Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) has the brightest surface in the solar system, reflecting nearly all of the sunlight that falls upon it. Enceladus is just above the rings, left of center.
Titan was on the far side of the planet at the time of this exposure, while the other moons were on the near side, much closer to Cassini.
Also seen here are details in the cloud bands of Saturn's mostly hydrogen atmosphere, variations in brightness across the dazzling rings and magnificent ring shadows cast upon the northern hemisphere.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 5, 2005, at a distance of approximately 3.4 million kilometers (2.1 million miles) from Saturn through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 728 nanometers. The image scale is 200 kilometers (124 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
From high above Titan's northern hemisphere, the Cassini spacecraft takes an oblique view toward the mid-latitude dark regions that gird the giant moon.
The view looks toward terrain centered at 45 degrees north latitude on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across).
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 939 nanometers. The view was acquired on March 10, 2007 at a distance of approximately 255,000 kilometers (158,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 30 kilometers (19 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This map of Titan's surface illustrates the regions that will be imaged by Cassini during the spacecraft's close flyby of the haze-covered moon on March 31, 2005. At closest approach, the spacecraft is expected to pass approximately 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) above the moon’s surface.
The colored lines delineate the regions that will be imaged at different resolutions. Images from this encounter will include the eastern portion of territory observed by Cassini’s radar instrument in October 2004 and February 2005. This will be the Cassini cameras' best view to date of this area of Titan.
The higher resolution (red) box at the northwestern edge of the covered region targets the area observed by Cassini's synthetic aperture radar at the closest approach point of the February flyby. The Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer experiment will also be targeting this area during the March 31 flyby, yielding coverage of the same part of Titan's surface by three different instruments.
The map shows only brightness variations on Titan's surface (the illumination is such that there are no shadows and no shading due to topographic variations). Previous observations indicate that, due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few to five times larger than the actual pixel scale labeled on the map.
The images for this global map were obtained using a narrow band filter centered at 938 nanometers -- a near-infrared wavelength (invisible to the human eye). At that wavelength, light can penetrate Titan's atmosphere to reach the surface and return through the atmosphere to be detected by the camera. The images have been processed to enhance surface details.
It is currently northern winter on Titan, so the moon's high northern latitudes are not illuminated, resulting in the lack of coverage north of 35 degrees north latitude.
At 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across, Titan is one of the solar system's largest moons.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
A day after entering orbit around Saturn, Cassini sped silently past Titan, imaging the moon's south polar region. This natural color image represents Cassini's view only about two hours after closest approach to the moon.
The superimposed coordinate system grid in the accompanying image at right illustrates the geographical regions of the moon that are illuminated and visible, as well as the orientation of Titan -- lines of longitude converge on the South Pole above the center of the image. The yellow curve marks the position of the boundary between day and night on Titan.
Images taken through blue, green and red filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained using the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera on July 2, 2004, from a distance of about 347,000 kilometers (216,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase angle of 62 degrees. This view is an improvement in resolution of nearly a factor of four over the previously released natural color view of Titan (see PIA06081). The image scale is 21 kilometers (13 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Shown here is a mosaic of Titan's south polar region acquired as Cassini passed by at a range of 339,000 kilometers (210,600 miles) on July 2. These images were acquired through special filters designed to see through the thick haze and atmosphere. The surface features become more blurry toward the limb, where the light reflected off the surface must pass through more atmosphere before reaching the camera. The bright spots near the bottom represent a field of clouds near the south pole. There are many strange dark and bright patterns on Titan's surface -- linear, sinuous and circular -- whose origins are not yet understood. The smallest features detected on the surface are about 10 kilometers (6 miles) wide.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This celestial circle of light is produced by the glow of sunlight scattered through the periphery of Titan's atmosphere as the Sun is occulted by Titan. It is the sum of all the sunsets and sunrises taking place on Titan at once.
The intriguing structure of Titan's north polar "hood" can be seen at upper left. A thin, detached, high-altitude global haze layer encircles the moon.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated 23 degrees to the left.
The image was taken in visible blue light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on June 29, 2007. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 210,000 kilometers (131,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 167 degrees. Image scale is 12 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This image taken on Oct. 24, 2004, reveals Titan's bright "continent-sized" terrain known as Xanadu. It was acquired with the narrow angle camera on Cassini's imaging science subsystem through a spectral filter centered at 938 nanometers, a wavelength region at which Titan's surface can be most easily detected. The surface is seen at a higher contrast than in previously released imaging science subsystem images due to a lower phase angle (Sun-Titan-Cassini angle), which minimizes scattering by the haze.
The image shows details about 10 times smaller than those seen from Earth. Surface materials with different brightness properties (or albedos) rather than topographic shading are highlighted. The image has been calibrated and slightly enhanced for contrast. It will be further processed to reduce atmospheric blurring and to optimize mapping of surface features. The origin and geography of Xanadu remain mysteries at this range. Bright features near the south pole (bottom) are clouds. On Oct. 26, Cassini will acquire images of features in the central-left portion of this image from a position about 100 times closer.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
The Cassini spacecraft looks through Titan's thick atmosphere to reveal bright and dark terrains on the Saturn-facing side of the planet's largest moon. North is up.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 11, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 2.222 million kilometers (1.381 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 10 degrees. Image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10514: Saturn's View of Titan sur le site de la NASA.
This radar image, obtained by Cassini's radar instrument during a near-polar flyby on Feb. 22, 2007, shows a big island smack in the middle of one of the larger lakes imaged on Saturn's moon Titan. This image offers further evidence that the largest lakes are at the highest latitudes.
The island is about 90 kilometers (62 miles) by 150 kilometers (93 miles) across, about the size of Kodiak Island in Alaska or the Big Island of Hawaii. The island may actually be a peninsula connected by a bridge to a larger stretch of land. As you go farther down the image, several very small lakes begin to appear, which may be controlled by local topography.
This image was taken in synthetic aperture mode at 700 meter (2,300 feet) resolution. North is toward the left. The image is centered at about 79 north degrees north and 310 degrees west.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
This synthetic aperture radar image was obtained by the Cassini spacecraft on its pass by Titan's south pole on Dec. 20, 2007. This image is centered near 76.5 south, 32.5 west and covers an area of 620 kilometers by 270 kilometers (385 miles by 170 miles).
Abundant evidence for flowing liquids is seen in this image, from sinuous, wide river channels to shorter, more chaotic drainage patterns. The extremely dissected, rugged terrain in the southern portion of the image has been very eroded by flowing liquids, probably from a combination of methane rainstorms and sapping (subsurface methane rising to erode the surface). The broad valleys seen in the southern portion of the image are particularly intriguing, as they appear to be flat-floored, filled with smooth material, and in places have sharply defined, relatively straight sides. Valleys such as this can be formed by tectonic processes, such as rifting, or by erosional processes, caused by flowing liquid or ice.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Voir l'image PIA10219: Flowing Liquids on Titan sur le site de la NASA.
Following its first flyby of Titan, Cassini gazed back at the smog-enshrouded moon's receding crescent. This natural color view was seen by the spacecraft about one day after closest approach. The slight bluish glow of Titan's haze is visible along the limb.
The superimposed coordinate system grid in the accompanying image at right illustrates the geographical regions of the moon that are illuminated and visible, as well as the orientation of Titan -- lines of longitude converge on the South Pole near the moon's eastern limb. The yellow curve marks the position of the boundary between day and night on Titan.
Images taken through blue, green and red filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera on July 3, 2004, from a distance of about 790,000 kilometers (491,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase angle of 115 degrees. The image scale is 47 kilometers (29 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Images recorded by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe descent imager/spectral radiometer between 4 and 0.3 miles (7 and 0.5 kilometers) were assembled to produce this panoramic mosaic. The probe ground track is indicated as points in white. North is up. The ridge near the centre is cut by a dozen darker lanes or channels. The landing site is marked with an "X" near the continuation of one of the channels.
The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
This movie of Titan shows data taken with Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer during the last three flybys of Titan. The flybys took place on Oct. 28, 2005, Dec. 26, 2005, and Jan. 15, 2006.
These false-color images were taken at wavelengths of 1.6 microns shown in blue, 2.01 microns in green and 5 microns in red.
The viewing geometry of the December flyby is roughly on the opposite hemispheres of the flybys in October and January. There are several important features shown by the movie. First, the globe of Titan exhibits two major types of terrain. One is very bright, and a darker one seems to be concentrated near the equator. Titan also has two very bright regions, the large one known as Tui Reggio, and the other as Hotei Arcus. These regions are thought to be surface deposits, probably of volcanic origin, and may be water and/or carbon dioxide frozen from the vapor. The December flyby data show that the western margins of Tui Reggio have a complex flow-like structure consistent with eruptive phenomena. The reddish feature at the south pole is Titan's south polar cloud system, which was very bright during the December flyby. During the October and January flybys it is barely visible, indicating that the atmosphere over titan's south pole is very dynamic.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.
This image shows a crater, approximately 60 kilometers (37 miles) in diameter, on the very eastern end of the radar image strip taken by the Cassini orbiter on its third close flyby of Titan on Feb. 15.
The appearance of the crater and the extremely bright (hence rough) blanket of material surrounding it is indicative of an origin by impact, in which a hypervelocity comet or asteroid, in this case, roughly 5-10 kilometers (3-6 miles) in size, slammed into the surface of Titan.
The bright surrounding blanket is debris, or ejecta, thrown out of the crater. The asymmetric appearance of this ejecta blanket could be an effect of atmospheric winds associated with the impact itself. Although clearly formed by impact, the feature lacks a central peak, suggesting that it has been eroded or otherwise modified after formation. Rainfall, wind erosion, and softening of the solid material in which the crater formed are all possible processes that might have altered this impact feature.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
This clear-filter view of Saturn's moon Titan reveals a region of cloud activity at high southern latitudes. Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
Cassini observations have generally been consistent with Earth-based observations that indicate the south-polar fields of clouds that had been observed frequently in 2004 haven't been present in 2005.
This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 31, 2005, at a distance of approximately 3.3 million kilometers (2 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 70 degrees. The image scale is 20 kilometers (12 miles) per pixel. North on Titan is up and rotated about 20 degrees to the left. The view has been mildly enhanced to make the cloud feature more easily visible.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
This composite was produced from images returned yesterday, January 14, 2005, by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during its successful descent to land on Titan. It shows a full 360-degree view around Huygens. The left-hand side, behind Huygens, shows a boundary between light and dark areas. The white streaks seen near this boundary could be ground 'fog,' as they were not immediately visible from higher altitudes.
As the probe descended, it drifted over a plateau (center of image) and was heading towards its landing site in a dark area (right). From the drift of the probe, the wind speed has been estimated at around 6-7 kilometers (about 4 miles) per hour.
These images were taken from an altitude of about 8 kilometers (about 5 miles) with aresolution of about 20 meters (about 65 feet) per pixel. The images were taken by the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer, one of two NASA instruments on the probe.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Descent Imager/Spectral team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm .
During a close flyby of Titan on March 31, 2005, Cassini's cameras got their best view to date of the region east of the bright Xanadu Regio. This mosaic consists of several frames taken by the narrow-angle camera (smaller frames) put together with an image taken by the wide-angle camera filling in the background. It reveals new detail of dark expanses and the surrounding brighter terrain.
Some of the features seen here are reminiscent of those seen elsewhere on Titan, but the images also reveal new features, which Cassini scientists are working to understand.
In the center of the image (and figure A at bottom) lies a bright area completely surrounded by darker material. The northern boundary of the bright "island" is relatively sharp and has a jagged profile, resembling the now-familiar boundary on the western side of Xanadu (see PIA06159). The profile of the southern boundary is similar. However, streamers of bright material extend southeastward into the dark terrain. At the eastern end of the bright "island" lies a region with complex interconnected dark and bright regions (see figure B).
To the south, the bright terrain is cut by fairly straight dark lines. Their linearity and apparently angular intersections suggest a tectonic influence, similar to features in seen in the bright terrain west of Xanadu (see PIA06158).
The camera's near-infrared observations cover ground that was also seen by Cassini's synthetic aperture radar in October 2004 and February 2005. Toward the northeastern edge of the dark material a dark, circular spot in the middle of a bright feature (see figure C) is an approximately 80-kilometer-wide (50-mile) crater identified in the February 2005 radar data (see PIA07368 for the radar image).
The resolution of this new image is lower but sufficient to reveal important similarities and differences between the two observations. Part of the crater floor is quite dark compared to the surrounding material at near-infrared wavelengths. This observation is consistent with the hypothesis that the dark material consists of complex hydrocarbons that have precipitated from the atmosphere and collected in areas of low elevation. At radar wavelengths the crater floor is much more uniform and there also are brightness differences seen by these two instruments outside of the crater. Such comparisons give Cassini scientists important clues about the roughness and composition of the surface material on Titan.
Another interesting comparison is the "dark terrain" with small bright features as seen by the radar (see PIA07367) and the essentially inverted pattern (bright with small dark features) seen by the imaging science subsystem cameras. In the mosaic, this area is in the top left narrow-angle camera image.
Within the bright terrain at the top of the mosaic, just left of center, lies a very intriguing feature: a strikingly dark spot from which diffuse dark material appears to extend to the northeast. The origin of this feature is not yet known, but it, too, lies within the radar image; Cassini scientists will thus be able to study it using these complementary observations.
The mosaic is centered on a region at 1 degree north latitude, 21 degree west longitude on Titan.
The Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera images were taken using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light and were acquired at distances ranging from approximately 148,300 to 112,800 kilometers (92,100 to 70,100 miles) from Titan. Resolution in the images is about 1 to 2 kilometers (0.6 to 1.2 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
The Cassini spacecraft's Titan Radar Mapper instrument imaged this area atop Xanadu, the bright area of Titan, on April 30, 2006. The picture is roughly 150 kilometers (93 miles) wide by 400 kilometers (249 miles) long, and shows features as small as 350 meters (1148 feet). Chains of hills or mountains are revealed by the radar beam, which is illuminating their northern sides (in this image, north is up). Interspersed between the chains of hills are darker areas where topographic features are absent or partly buried. The darkest areas could contain liquids, which tend to reflect the radar beam away from Cassini in the absence of winds, making the area appear quite dark. At Titan's icy conditions, these liquids would be methane and/or ethane. Stubby drainage features can be see faintly between the chains of hills, suggesting flow of the liquid across parts of the region.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
A single image from the Huygens Descent Imager/ Spectral Radiometer (DISR) instrument of a dark plain area on Titan, seen during descent to the landing site, that indicates flow around bright 'islands.' The areas below and above the bright islands may be at different elevations.
The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer is one of two NASA instruments on the probe.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Descent Imager/Spectral team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer visit http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/.
These images show the surface of Titan at two different infrared wavelengths. They were captured by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer onboard Cassini as the spacecraft flew by at an altitude of 1200 kilometers (745 miles) – Cassini's closest approach yet to the hazy moon. The image on the left was taken at a wavelength of 1 micron and shows approximately what a digital camera might see. The image on the right, taken at a wavelength of 2 microns, is the most detailed picture to date of the Titan's surface. It reveals complex landforms with sharp boundaries, which scientists are eager to further study.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/.
This view of Titan reveals structure in the moon's complex atmosphere. The geometry of the Cassini spacecraft's view of Titan during this flyby was similar to that of Voyager 1's pass in 1980.
The view has been greatly contrast-enhanced and shows intriguing structure in the north of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) that is also clearly visible in a violet light view (see PIA07701) taken at about the same time.
The color view was created by combining images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Dec. 26, 2005, at a distance of approximately 193,000 kilometers (120,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 29 degrees. The image scale is 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This composite image shows a massive mountain range running just south of Titan's equator. Near the center of the image, the mountain range runs from southeast to northwest. It is about 150 kilometers long (93 miles) and 30 kilometers (19 miles) wide and about 1.5 kilometers (nearly a mile) high. This range, and smaller ranges to the west and east of the main range, probably results from material welling up below as the crust of Titan is pulled apart by tectonic forces.
This image was obtained during an Oct. 25 flyby designed to obtain the highest resolution infrared views of Titan yet. Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer resolved surface features as small as 400 meters (1,300 feet). This composite image was taken at a distance of 12,000 kilometers (7,200 miles) from Titan. This image was constructed from images taken at wavelengths of 1.3 microns shown in blue, 2 microns shown in green, and 5 microns shown in red.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona where this image was produced.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/.
This wide-angle image captured by Cassini's imaging science subsystem shows streaks of surface material in the equatorial region of Titan. It was acquired through a near-infrared filter, which is sensitive to methane. Streaks occur in the east-west direction (upper left to lower right), and may be caused by the movement of a fluid over the surface, such as wind, hydrocarbon liquids, or a migrating ice sheet, such as a glacier. The large-scale streaks are most easily explained by winds in Titan's massive atmosphere. The image scale of this picture is 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) per pixel. North is 45 degree to the right of vertical.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This infrared view shows features on the leading hemisphere of Titan, including the bright, crescent-shaped Hotei arcus (right of center), which is also informally called "the Smile" by researchers.
The view is centered on the bright region called Xanadu. Above center is the large crater Menrva, which is surrounded by darker material.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated 30 degrees to the left.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 13, 2006 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The image was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 41 degrees. Image scale is 7 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This set of composite images was constructed from the best Cassini radar data and visual and infrared mapping spectrometer data obtained from all the Titan flybys up to the most recent flyby on Oct 25 (T20).
The globe to the upper right is centered on 0 degrees longitude, and each of the other globes is labeled as to which longitude appears at the center of the disk. The two rightmost images in the bottom row are of the north and south poles of Titan, respectively. The two instruments provide complementary data, all of which is required to understand the geologic processes that have shaped the surface of Titan over the age of the solar system.
The images were taken at wavelengths of 1.3 microns shown in blue, 2 microns shown in green, and 5 microns shown in red.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona where this image was produced. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.
This area imaged by the Cassini radar system during the spacecraft's third close flyby of Titan on Feb. 15, 2005, is just to the east of the Circus Maximus impact feature (see PIA07365).
The white lines could be channels in which fluid flowed from the slopes of Circus Maximus toward the bright area in the upper right. Areas that appear bright at radar wavelengths may be rough or inclined toward the direction of illumination. The bright area in this image could have received outflows of debris from the channels, making the surface appear radar bright. In this sense, the area may resemble somewhat the rubble strewn plains in the region where the Huygens probe landed. The fluid carrying the debris was most likely liquid methane, given the extremely cold ambient conditions at the surface of Titan.
The longest channel in the feature is approximately 200 kilometers long (124 miles). The seams running across the image are an effect of the matching of the different radar beams to assemble the full image.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Sunlight streams through the high-altitude haze layer that extends completely around the giant moon, Titan, in this view of the moon taken by the Cassini spacecraft. Some fine structure can be spotted in the ever-shifting hazes in Titan's northern polar reaches to the top.
The distant sky beyond Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is not empty, but instead is filled in the lower half by the barely visible, immense bulk of Saturn 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) beyond. The view is toward the night side of both worlds.
Titan's image is saturated, or over exposed, near the five o'clock position, obscuring the details in the atmosphere.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 2, 2006 at a distance of approximately 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 163 degrees. Image scale is 14 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel on Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Titan's murky atmosphere shines as a halo of scattered light.
Prior to the Cassini spacecraft's arrival, Titan remained incognito, swathed in its impenetrable envelope of frigid gases. Now, gradually but relentlessly, the veil continues to fall away under Cassini's gaze, bringing the wonders of this world into view.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up.
The image was taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The image was acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 10, 2006 at a distance of approximately 3.1 million kilometers (1.9 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 165 degrees. Image scale is 18 kilometers (11 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This pair of images, taken by the Cassini spacecraft radar mapper on two different Titan passes on Dec. 11, 2006 (T21 left), and Oct. 29, 2005 (T8 right), represent two different views of a field of dunes located near 9.4 degrees south latitude by 290 degrees west longitude.
The images were taken in synthetic aperture mode and have a resolution of approximately 500 meters (1,640 feet). North is toward the top of both images, and each image is approximately 400 kilometers (250 miles) long by 275 kilometers (170 miles) wide. The images are different only because the radar instrument illuminated the dunes from different directions. Acting somewhat like a flash camera, the radar sends out microwave pulses and makes an image from the pulses after they are reflected back. Imagine that both the "camera" and the "flash" come from the left in the left image and from the top in the right image.
Most obvious differences are seen in the large bright feature at the center of both images. At left, its left edge is brighter, emphasizing the more steep slopes there. Farther left, the dunes are more clearly defined in the right image as their faces are caught by the illumination. However, since the dunes are visible in both images, it is likely that the materials making up the dark and light stripes are also somehow different. More detailed studies of how materials on Titan reflect and scatter at different angles are giving us clues about what different materials might be present in this cold and distant world.
For more information about dunes on Titan, see PIA03567.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Although it is far too cold for blossoming flowers, summer does bring storm clouds and presumably rain to Titan's south polar region. The observed persistence of convective storm activity in the region during the southern Titan summer has led scientists to speculate that the dark, footprint-shaped feature near the upper left could be a past or present reservoir for Titan's methane rains.
This series of three Cassini narrow-angle camera images, centered on the pole, shows the evolution of bright clouds in the region over the course of two hours during Cassini's distant June 6, 2005, flyby of the planet-sized moon.
The appearance of the feature seen here is unique among the dark terrains observed thus far on Titan. Other dark areas appear to have angular or diffuse boundaries, while this one possesses a smooth perimeter, suggestive of an eroded shoreline.
In addition to the notion that the dark feature is or was a lake filled with liquid hydrocarbons, scientists have speculated about other possibilities. For instance, it is plausible that the lake is simply a broad depression filled by dark, solid hydrocarbons falling from the atmosphere onto Titan's surface. In this case, the smoothed outline might be the result of a process unrelated to rainfall, such as a sinkhole or a volcanic caldera.
A still image of the south polar region from the same time period is also available (see PIA06240).
The images in this movie sequence were taken using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light, allowing Cassini to see through the obscuring smog of Titan's atmosphere and down to the surface. The images were acquired from an approximate distance of 450,000 kilometers (279,000 miles) from Titan. Resolution in the original images is approximately 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel; the images were aligned and reprocessed at the same scale to create the movie.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
Annotated Stereographic
View of Titan's Surface
This poster shows a stereographic (fish-eye) view of Titan's surface from six different altitudes. The images taken by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe descent imager/spectral radiometer show the haze layer at 20 to 21 kilometers (12 to 13 miles). The images were taken on Jan. 14, 2005.
The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The descent imager/spectral radiometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
Cassini's radar instrument obtained another in its series of north polar swaths of Titan on April 10, 2007. This image exposes more of the transition between the mid-latitudes and the polar area, and extends coverage of the lakes region previously described in PIA09182.
This swath begins at 20 degrees south, 37 degrees west, continuing approximately north-northeast. Although it appears to be straight in this image, its path on Titan curves gently toward the east until it reaches 80 degrees north at 300 degrees west, then it turns south and ends at 51 degrees north, 213 degrees west. The swath width varies from about 200 kilometers (120 miles) at its center to about 500 kilometers (310 miles) at the ends, and is more than 6,700 kilometers (4,100 miles) long.
Beginning at the left end of the image as shown, we see the dark sinuous features previously interpreted to be dunes, interspersed with bright features that appear to be higher. In some cases the dunes seem to bend around the bright features, and in others they may be climbing up onto them; both behaviors are commonly seen in dune fields on Earth. About one-third of the way through the swath, the dunes become rare and then disappear, to be replaced by more linear features. Some of these have rounded and brighter ends, similar to lava flows on Earth (in synthetic aperture radar images, rougher features appear as bright). Just past the midway point, we find relatively flat and featureless terrain with some structures that also resemble flow fronts, followed by a complex area of semi-circular to irregular depressions that may have formed by collapse. These give way to the lakes at the northernmost portion. Here T28 overlaps with the T25 synthetic aperture radar swath (see PIA09182), offering stereo coverage that will be used to determine feature heights.
The lakes, which are thought to be filled with a combination of methane and ethane, have complex shorelines that often include channels. Some of these channels have well-developed tributary systems and drain many thousands of square kilometers of the surrounding terrain. As shown in the mosaic (see PIA08365), these lakes are likely connected, and may form part of a larger sea. Brighter areas within the lakes may represent the lake bottom - at the radar's 2-centimeter wavelength, it is possible that the liquid is transparent for many tens of meters (tens of yards) to the radar, allowing a reflection to be returned from the lake bottom.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
This Cassini radar image shows two lakes "kissing" each other on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.
The image from a flyby on Sept. 23, 2006, covers an area about 60 kilometers (37 miles) wide by 40 kilometers (25 miles) high.
This pass was primarily dedicated to the ion and neutral mass spectrometer instrument, so although, the volume of radar data was small, scientists were amazed to see Earth-like lakes. With Titan's colder temperatures and hydrocarbon-rich atmosphere, however, the lakes likely contain a combination of methane and ethane, not water.
In this image, near 73 degrees north latitude, 46 degrees west longitude, two lakes are seen, each 20 to 25 kilometers (12 to 16 miles) across. They are joined by a relatively narrow channel. The lake on the right has lighter patches within it, indicating that it may be slowly drying out as the northern summer approaches.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
This Synthetic Aperture Radar image of the surface of Saturn's moon Titan was obtained by the Cassini spacecraft on Sept. 7, 2005. The bright, rough region on the left side of the image seems to be topographically high terrain that is cut by channels and bays.
The boundary of the bright (rough) region and the dark (smooth) region appears to be a shoreline. The patterns in the dark area indicate that it may once have been flooded, with the liquid having at least partially receded.
The image is 175 kilometers high and 330 kilometers wide (109 miles by 205 miles), and is located at 66 degrees south latitude, 356 degrees west longitude in the southern hemisphere of Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
This side-by-side view shows a newly discovered impact crater (at left) compared with a previously discovered crater (at right). The new crater was just discovered by the Cassini spacecraft's radar instrument during its most recent Titan flyby on May 12, 2008. This makes the fourth feature definitely identified as an impact crater so far on Titan -- fewer than 100 features are regarded as possible impacts. Compared with Saturn's other moons, which have many thousands of craters, Titan's surface is very sparsely cratered. This is in part due to Titan's dense atmosphere, which burns up the smaller impacting bodies before they can hit the surface. Geological processes, such as wind-driven motion of sand and icy volcanism, may also wipe out craters.
Both images are about 350 kilometers (217 miles) in width. The crater on the right was discovered by Cassini in 2005 and is shown here for comparison. It is 80 kilometers (50 miles) in diameter (see PIA07368), with the radar illumination from above. Called Sinlap, this crater is estimated to be about 1,300 meters (4300 feet) deep. The new feature pictured on the left, which has not been named yet, is bigger than the Sinlap crater with a diameter of about 112 kilometers (70 miles).
The new crater is located at about 26 degrees north latitude, 200 degrees west longitude, in the bright region known as Dilmun, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) north of the Huygens landing site. In its image, also illuminated from above, it appears slightly irregular, suggesting that it was modified after it was formed, perhaps by collapses of segments of its rim onto the floor. The crater floor appears flat, and two small bright spots indicate a likely central peak complex. The ejecta blanket (surrounding material) from this crater is less prominent than that of the Sinlap crater. The crater's more degraded character suggests it could be older than Sinlap (assuming that erosive processes are the same at both locations, which are at similar latitudes).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/.
Voir l'image PIA10655: Impact Craters sur le site de la NASA.
Fluids have flowed and cut these deeply-incised channels into the icy surface of Titan as seen in this Synthetic Aperture Radar image. The channels are roughly 1 kilometer across (0.6 miles) and perhaps 200 meters deep (650 feet); some can be traced as far as 200 kilometers (120 miles). Many of them have angular segments suggesting they may follow faults in Titan's crust.
Taken together with the two other radar passes (October 2004 and February 2005), these very high resolution images have identified at least two distinct types of drainage and channel formation on Titan. The style shown in this image consists of long valleys following angular patterns without many tributaries, suggesting that fluids flow over great distances. By contrast, (PIA03565) shows channels that form a denser network that might indicate rainfall.
This Cassini radar image was acquired as a part of the Titan flyby observations taken on Sept. 7, 2005, from a distance of about 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles). The area is located at about 55 degrees south latitude, 7.5 degrees west longitude and extends over 300 kilometers (186 miles) right to left.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Surface details on Titan are seen faintly through the murky haze of the moon's atmosphere.
Lit terrain seen here is on the leading hemisphere of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across). North is toward the top of the image.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 30, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 939 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 370,000 kilometers (230,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 87 degrees. Image scale is 22 kilometers (14 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10466: World Beneath the Haze sur le site de la NASA.
This image was taken on Dec. 11, 2004 by the Cassini spacecraft as it approached Titan for its second close encounter with this intriguing moon.
The bright and dark regions near the center of the frame are features on Titan's surface. The image has been processed to make features more visible. The surface contrast is degraded toward the edges of the disk due to the effects of Titan's smoggy atmosphere. The region seen here is similar to that seen during Cassini's first close flyby of Titan in October (see PIA06141). The bright area toward the bottom of the image is the region dubbed "Xanadu." North is to the upper right.
The image was acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera at a distance of approximately 810,000 kilometers (503,000 miles). The image scale is 4.8 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This map of Titan's surface illustrates the regions that will be imaged by Cassini during the spacecraft's close flyby of Titan on Aug. 22, 2005. At closest approach, the spacecraft is expected to pass approximately 3,800 kilometers (2,360 miles) above the moon's surface. At 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across, Titan is one of the solar system's largest moons.
The colored lines delineate the regions that will be imaged at differing resolutions.
As Cassini continues its reconnaissance of Titan, maps of this haze-enshrouded world continue to improve. Images from this flyby will sharpen the moderate resolution coverage of terrain on the side of Titan that always faces Saturn.
The highest resolution image planned for this encounter will cover a 215-kilometer-wide (134-mile) bright feature provisionally named "Bazaruto Facula." (A facula is the name chosen to denote a bright spot on Titan.) At the center of the facula is an 80-kilometer-wide (50-mile) crater (not yet named), seen by Cassini's radar experiment during a Titan flyby in February 2005 (see PIA07368). The imaging cameras and visual and infrared mapping spectrometer images taken in March and April 2005 also show this crater (see PIA06234).
The southernmost corner of the highest resolution (1 kilometer per pixel) frame should also cover the northern portion of a large bright feature provisionally known as "Quivira."
Wide-angle images obtained during this flyby should cover much of the Tsegihi-Aztlan-Quivira region (also known as the "H" region) at lower resolution.
The map shows only brightness variations on Titan's surface (the illumination is such that there are no shadows and no shading from topographic variations). Previous observations indicate that, due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are up to five times larger than the actual pixel scale labeled on the map.
The images for this global map were obtained using a narrow-band filter centered at 938 nanometers -- a near-infrared wavelength (invisible to the human eye) at which light can penetrate Titan's atmosphere. The images have been processed to enhance surface details.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA07711: Cassini's Aug. 22, 2005, Titan Flyby sur le site de la NASA.
This synthetic aperture radar image of the surface of Saturn's moon Titan was acquired on Oct. 26, 2004, when the Cassini spacecraft flew approximately 2,500 kilometers (1,553 miles) above the surface and acquired radar data for the first time.
The radar illumination was from the south: dark regions may represent areas that are smooth, made of radar-absorbing materials, or are sloped away from the direction of illumination. A striking bright feature stretches from upper left to lower right across this image, with connected 'arms' to the East. The fact that the lower (southern) edges of the features are brighter is consistent with the structure being raised above the relatively featureless darker background. Comparisons with other features and data from other instruments will help to determine whether this is a cryovolcanic flow, where water-rich liquid has welled up from Titan's warm interior.
The image covers an area about 150 kilometers (90 miles) square, and is centered at about 45 degrees north, 30 degrees west in the northern hemisphere of Titan, over a region that has not yet been imaged optically. The smallest details seen on the image are around 1 kilometer (.62 mile) across. Features are less clear at the bottom of the image where the viewing was less favorable. A faint horizontal seam between the radar beams can be seen half way up in this image.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
This image was taken during Cassini's third close approach to Titan on Feb. 15, 2005.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera, through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light, centered at 938 nanometers.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
A global detached haze layer and discrete cloud-like features high above Titan's northern terminator (day-night transition) are visible in this close-up image acquired on October 24, 2004, as the Cassini spacecraft neared its first close encounter with Titan. This image is a colorized version of an ultraviolet image released on October 25, 2004 (PIA06120). The haze has been given colors that are close to what the natural colors are believed to be. The view was also sharpened to enhance the structure in the discrete features.
The image was acquired at a distance of about 1 million kilometers (621,371 miles) in a near ultraviolet filter that is sensitive to scattering by small particles. The Sun preferentially illuminates the southern hemisphere at this time; the north polar region is in darkness. The well-known global detached haze layer, hundreds of kilometers above Titan's surface, is produced by photochemical reactions and is visible as a thin ring of bright material around the entire planet. At the northern high-latitude edge of the image, additional striations are visible, caused by particulates that are high enough to be illuminated by the Sun even though the surface directly below is in darkness. These striations may simply be caused by a wave propagating through the detached haze, or they may be evidence of additional regional haze or cloud layers not present at other latitudes.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This recent image of Titan reveals more complex patterns of bright and dark regions on the surface, including a small, dark, circular feature, completely surrounded by brighter material.
During the two most recent flybys of Titan, on March 31 and April 16, 2005, Cassini captured a number of images of the hemisphere of Titan that faces Saturn. The image at the left is taken from a mosaic of images obtained in March 2005 (see PIA06222) and shows the location of the more recently acquired image at the right. The new image shows intriguing details in the bright and dark patterns near an 80-kilometer-wide (50-mile) crater seen first by Cassini's synthetic aperture radar experiment during a Titan flyby in February 2005 (see PIA07368) and subsequently seen by the imaging science subsystem cameras as a dark spot (center of the image at the left).
Interestingly, a smaller, roughly 20-kilometer-wide (12-mile), dark and circular feature can be seen within an irregularly-shaped, brighter ring, and is similar to the larger dark spot associated with the radar crater. However, the imaging cameras see only brightness variations, and without topographic information, the identity of this feature as an impact crater cannot be conclusively determined from this image. The visual infrared mapping spectrometer, which is sensitive to longer wavelengths where Titan's atmospheric haze is less obscuring -- observed this area simultaneously with the imaging cameras, so those data, and perhaps future observations by Cassini's radar, may help to answer the question of this feature's origin.
The new image at the right consists of five images that have been added together and enhanced to bring out surface detail and to reduce noise, although some camera artifacts remain.
These images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers -- considered to be the imaging science subsystem's best spectral filter for observing the surface of Titan. This view was acquired from a distance of 33,000 kilometers (20,500 miles). The pixel scale of this image is 390 meters (0.2 miles) per pixel, although the actual resolution is likely to be several times larger.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
The complex and dynamic atmosphere of Titan displays multiple haze layers near the north pole in this view, which also provides an excellent look at the detached stratospheric haze layer that surrounds the moon at lower latitudes.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated 20 degrees to the left.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 16, 2006, using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers. The image was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.2 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 68 degrees. Image scale is 7 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This radar image of Titan shows a semi-circular feature that may be part of an impact crater. Very few impact craters have been seen on Titan so far, implying that the surface is young. Each new crater identified on Titan helps scientists to constrain the age of the surface.
Taken by Cassini's radar mapper on Jan. 13, 2007, during a flyby of Titan, the image swath revealed what appeared to be the northernmost half of an impact crater. This crater is roughly 180 kilometers (110 miles) wide. Only three impact craters have been identified on Titan and several others, like this one, are likely to also have been caused by impact. The bright material is interpreted to be part of the crater’s ejecta blanket, and is likely topographically higher than the surrounding plains. The inner part of the crater is dark, and may represent smooth deposits that have covered the inside of the crater.
This image was taken in synthetic aperture mode and has a resolution of approximately 350 meters (1,150 feet). North is toward the top left corner of the image, which is approximately 240 kilometers (150 miles) wide by 140 kilometers (90 miles) high. The image is centered at about 26.5 degrees north and 9 degrees west.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
This image of Saturn's moon Titan from the Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument on the Cassini spacecraft shows the southwestern area of a feature called Xanadu (bottom right of the image). The area is bright because it reflects the radio wavelengths used to make this radar images. The image was taken on April 30, 2006.
Xanadu is one of the most prominent features on Titan and was first seen in ground-based observations. The origin of Xanadu is still unknown, but this radar image reveals details previously unseen, such as numerous curvy features that may indicate fluid flows. Linear dark streaks visible in radar-dark areas are dune fields, also seen in previous radar images (see PIA03567).Near the center of the image is a prominent circular feature, named Guabonito, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) in diameter. It might be an impact crater or a cryovolcanic caldera. If this is an impact structure, the absence of an ejecta blanket suggests that the feature has been highly eroded, like some impact structures on Earth, or has been buried by the dune fields. Other radar-bright areas (top left and top right) appear to be topographically high and might act as obstacles, diverting the dunes around them. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.This image of Titan's surface shows the entire scene obtained by the Cassini radar instrument on Sept. 7, 2006. It includes clear examples of the longitudinal dunes, as well as one of only three positively-identified impact craters (on the far left).
Titan's longitudinal dunes, first discovered during the third close flyby of Titan in February 2005 (see PIA03555), make up most of Titan's equatorial dark regions. These run east-west, are around 1 to 2 kilometers (0.6 to 1.2 miles) wide, spaced 1 to 2 kilometers apart, around 100 meters (111 yards) high, and from 10 to over 100 kilometers (6.2 to 62 miles) long. They curve around the bright features in the image -- which may be high-standing topographic obstacles -- following the prevailing wind pattern. Unlike Earth's silicate dunes, these may be solid organic particles or ice coated with organic material.
The left (western-most) portion of the image also shows one of only three impact craters confirmed on Titan so far. Roughly 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) in diameter, its center is at 70 degrees west, 10 degrees north. The difference in overall appearance between this crater, which has a central peak, and those without, such as Sinlap (see PIA07368), indicates variations in the conditions of impact, thickness of the crust, or properties of the meteorite that made the crater. The dark floor indicates smooth and/or highly absorbing materials.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
This mosaic of 28 images shows the regional coverage taken during Cassini's first encounter with Titan on Oct. 26, 2004.
Cutting through the middle of the image is a sharp boundary between the bright region known as Xanadu Regio on the right and dark terrain to the left. Several smaller bright features, between 30 and 200 kilometers (20 to 125 miles) across are seen within the dark terrain. These intriguing features are a focus of further research and observations for Cassini scientists. One clue to their origin and history is the presence of bright "trails" within the dark material on the eastern sides of the bright spots.
A mottled texture is seen within Xanadu, including dark, crisscrossing lines, suggestive of tectonic activity. No definitive craters have been found in these images, though several bright rings or circular features are seen in the dark terrain. However, without topographic shading, their identification as impact structures can not be confirmed.
The images in this mosaic have been processed to enhance surface features and sharpen boundaries. All images were taken at a special filter centered in the near-infrared at 938 nanometers that provides the camera's best view of surface features.
The images making up this mosaic were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera at distances ranging from 100,400 to 71,000 kilometers (62,400 to 44,100 miles) and have pixel scales ranging from 1.2 to 0.8 kilometers (0.75 to 0.5miles). This mosaic is scaled to 800 meters (2,625 feet) per pixel and is centered at 20 degrees south latitude, 157.5 degrees west longitude on Titan. Black areas on this mosaic represent areas where images were not taken during this sequence or were not returned from Cassini.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
JPL manages the Voyager project for NASA's Office of Space Science.
Voir l'image PIA01532: Titan's Cloud Systems sur le site de la NASA.
A new image of Titan taken by Cassini provides a closer, clearer view of an interesting bright feature surrounded by darker material.
During the two most recent flybys of Titan, on March 31 and April 16, 2005, Cassini captured a number of images of the hemisphere of Titan that faces Saturn. The image at the left is taken from a mosaic of images obtained in March 2005 (see PIA06222) and shows the location of the new image at the right. The image at the right shows an intriguing bright spot as well as the southern boundary of the dark terrain that dominates the equatorial region of this hemisphere of Titan.
The 80-kilometer-wide (50-mile) bright spot seen in the upper right portion of the image at the left was first seen in images taken during a distant encounter with Titan shortly after Cassini's Saturn orbit insertion burn in July 2004. In images taken in March, this spot was shown to be roughly circular but new, higher-resolution images like the one at the right reveal surprisingly angular edges. The angular margins suggest that they have been influenced by tectonic processes (for example, faulting). The sharp western margins and more diffuse bright material off the eastern margin are consistent with bright features seen within dark terrain in the region of Titan observed during previous flybys late last year and in February (see PIA06541). The west-east nature of these features is consistent with "wakes" being formed through wind-driven activity. It is also worth noting that this bright spot appears to be partly surrounded by thin, curving tendrils of bright material.
The view at the left consists of five images that have been added together and enhanced to bring out surface detail and to reduce noise, although some camera artifacts remain.
These images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers -- considered to be the imaging science subsystem's best spectral filter for observing the surface of Titan. This view was acquired from a distance of approximately 43,000 kilometers (26,700 miles). The pixel scale of this image is 510 meters (0.3 miles) per pixel, although the actual resolution is likely to be several times larger.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
Titan's veil begins to lift as Cassini's cameras peer through the hazy moon.
This image acquired at a range of 344,000 kilometers (213,700 miles) shows details at Titan's surface never seen before. The image shows only surface brightness no topographic shading. The finest features are less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) across. In other areas the surface boundaries are less distinct perhaps due to different geologic process or atmospheric effects. There are some linear features that could be impact craters but the fact that many features are linear suggests that other geologic processes are shaping the surface.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This map of Titan's surface illustrates the regions that will be viewed by Cassini's imaging cameras during the spacecraft's close flyby of Titan on Oct. 28, 2005. At closest approach, the spacecraft is expected to pass approximately 1,400 kilometers (800 miles) above the moon's surface.
The colored lines delineate the regions that will be imaged at differing resolutions.
The highest resolution imaging coverage during the flyby will be of the eastern portion of the dark region called Shangri-la and the boundary between Shangri-la and bright Xanadu. Several of the major "islands" in eastern Shangri-la will be featured, including faculae (or bright spots) which have the provisional names Kerguelen, Vis, Crete and Tortola. These bright features on Titan are named for island features from Earth.
The map shows only brightness variations on Titan's surface (the illumination is such that there are no shadows and no shading due to topographic variations). Previous observations indicate that, due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few to five times larger than the actual pixel scale labeled on the map.
The images for this global map were obtained using a narrow band filter centered at 938 nanometers - a near-infrared wavelength (invisible to the human eye) at which light can penetrate Titan's atmosphere to reach the surface and return through the atmosphere to be detected by the camera. The images have been processed to enhance surface details.The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Saturn's hazy moon Titan appears to drift above Saturn's ringplane in this view taken only a tenth of a degree above the rings. Titan's small orbital inclination is enough to make it appear above the ringplane from this viewing angle. Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
The Sun is below the rings in this image, so light that makes it to Cassini is that which has been diffusely transmitted through the rings. Thus, the densest parts of the rings appear dark in this image, and the dusty gaps in the rings, such as the Cassini Division, appear bright.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 25, 2005, at a distance of approximately 3.2 million kilometers (2 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 50 degrees. The image scale is 19 kilometers (12 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
Many denizens of the Saturn system wear a uniformly gray mantle of darkened ice, but not these two moons. The brightest body in the solar system, Enceladus, is contrasted here against Titan's smoggy, golden murk.
Ironically, what these two moons hold in common gives rise to their stark contrasting colors. Both bodies are, to varying degrees, geologically active. For Enceladus, its southern polar vents emit a spray of icy particles that coats the small moon, giving it a clean, white veneer. On Titan, yet undefined processes are supplying the atmosphere with methane and other chemicals that are broken down by sunlight. These chemicals are creating the thick yellow-orange haze that is spread through the atmosphere and, over geologic time, falls and coats the surface.
The thin, bluish haze along Titan's limb is caused when sunlight is scattered by haze particles roughly the same size as the wavelength of blue light, or around 400 nanometers.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained on Feb. 5, 2006, using the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a distance of 4.1 million kilometers (2.5 million miles) from Enceladus and 5.3 million kilometers (3.3 miles) from Titan. Resolution in the original images was 25 kilometers (16 miles) per pixel on Enceladus and 32 kilometers (20 miles) per pixel on Titan. The view has been magnified by a factor of two.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This map of Titan's surface brightness was assembled from images taken by the Cassini spacecraft over the past year, both as it approached the Saturn system and during three closer flybys in July, October and December 2004.
Due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the size of surface features that can be resolved is a few to five times larger than the actual pixel scale. The pixel scales of the individual images in the map range from 88 to 2 kilometers (55 miles to 1 mile), so the scales of the surface features that can be resolved range from 180 to 10 kilometers (112 to 6 miles).
The images were acquired using a near-infrared filter (centered at 938 nanometers) that has been proven effective at peering through Titan's haze to its troposphere and surface. Similar to a cloudy day on Earth, these images indicate only brightness variations; there are no shadows or topographic shading effects.
The map reveals complex patterns of bright and dark material on Titan's surface. The large scale features, including Xanadu Regio--the large, bright feature that extends from approximately 80 degrees to 130 degrees west near the equator--have been observed from Earth over the past several years.
The patterns seem to vary with latitude. Close to the equator there is more contrast in the large-scale bright and dark features, with some strikingly linear boundaries that are suggestive of geologic processes at work within Titan's crust. The southern-middle latitudes are more uniformly bright, whereas there is more dark material near the south pole. The very bright features near the south pole are clouds. High northern latitudes are not illuminated during the current season on Titan, which is southern summer.
Cassini-Huygens scientists are investigating what causes the latitudinal variation in brightness. One possibility is that, similar to Earth, some parts of the surface receive higher amounts of precipitation than others over Titan's long year (29.5 Earth years), resulting in different amounts of erosion across the surface.
The Huygens probe landed at approximately 10 degrees south, 190 degrees west, near a boundary between dark and bright material. By combining Huygens' very high-resolution observations (see PIA07235) with Cassini's regional and global-scale, lower-resolution images of Titan, as well as Cassini radar and the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer observations (see PIA07009 and PIA06983, respectively), Cassini-Huygens scientists are working to unravel the complex history of Titan's surface.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This map of Titan's surface, generated from images taken during Cassini's approach to Saturn, illustrates the imaging coverage planned during Cassini's first very close Titan flyby on Oct. 26, 2004.
Colored lines enclose regions that will be covered at different imaging scales as Cassini approaches Titan. Based on previous observations, it is anticipated that the size of the smallest visible surface features will be approximately five times larger than the image scale. Thus, the smallest visible features within the region bounded by the red curve should be about 1 to 1.2 kilometers (0.6 to 0.9 mile) across. The yellow X marks the predicted landing site for the Huygens probe, the target of the camera's highest-resolution mosaic. Images of this site taken near closest approach may have higher resolution than indicated here. Features a few hundred meters or yards across may be discernible, depending on the effect that relative motion between the spacecraft and Titan has on the quality of the images.
The images used to create the map were acquired between April and June 2004 using a narrow, 938-nanometer filter that sees through Titan's atmospheric haze to the surface. These images have been processed to enhance surface details. Scales range from 88 to 35 kilometers (55 to 22 miles) per pixel. It's currently winter in Titan's northern hemisphere, so high northern latitudes are not illuminated, resulting in the map's upper limit at roughly 45 degrees north latitude.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Titan's equatorial latitudes are distinctly different in character from its south polar region, as this image shows.
The dark terrain, presumably lowland, seen here does not extend much farther south than about 30 degrees South. The successful Huygens probe landed in such a region. The Huygens probe is rotating into the light here, seeing the dawn of a new day.
The bright region toward the right side of Titan's disk is Xanadu. This area is thought to consist of upland terrain that is relatively uncontaminated by the dark material that fills the lowland regions.
Near the moon's south pole, and just eastward of the terminator, is the dark feature identified by imaging scientists as the best candidate (so far) for a past or present hydrocarbon lake on Titan (see PIA06241). Farther east of the lake-like feature, bright clouds arc around the pole. These clouds occupy a latitude range that is consistent with previously-seen convective cloud activity on Titan.
Titan is Saturn's largest moon, at 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on July 7, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 60 degrees. The image was obtained using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The image scale is 7 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
This false-color mosaic of Saturn's largest moon Titan, obtained by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, shows what scientists interpret as an icy volcano (see inset). The mosaic was constructed using six medium-resolution infrared images, obtained during Cassini's flyby of the hazy moon on Oct. 26, 2004.
The colors correspond to atmospheric (red) and surface (green and blue) features that are not visible to the human eye. The inset shows a high-resolution image taken using a 2.3 micron filter near the point of Cassini's closest approach to Titan at 1,200 kilometers (746 miles). The resolution in this inset image is 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) per pixel. The image scale of the large image is 25 kilometers (16 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.
Voir l'image PIA07965: Titan Volcano sur le site de la NASA.
This specially processed composite view reveals a tremendous amount of structure in the northern polar atmosphere of Titan. The hazes in Titan's atmosphere are known to extend hundreds of kilometers above the surface.
Structure visible here could be due to multiple detached hazes, or waves in the atmosphere that propagate through stably stratified layers.
Ten images taken during a brief period were processed to enhance fine detail and then were combined to create this view.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up.
The images were taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 18, 2006 at a distance of approximately 2.2 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 155 degrees. Image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Large areas of this Cassini synthetic aperture radar image of Titan are covered by long, dark ridges. They resemble the "cat scratches" seen in other places on Titan, but here they are longer and straighter. Spaced about 1 to 2 kilometers (0.6 to 1 miles) apart, they curve slightly around teardrop-shaped bright terrain, giving the impression of a Japanese garden of sand raked around boulders. The bright material appears to be high-standing rough material that the ridges bend around. This suggests that the ridges are dunes that winds have blown across the surface of Titan from left to right (roughly west to east).
This image was taken during the ninth Titan flyby on Oct. 28, 2005, (the fourth flyby for Cassini's synthetic aperture radar), at a distance of about 1300 kilometers (800 miles).
The image covers an area roughly 140 kilometers by 200 kilometers (120 miles). It is located 13 degrees south latitude and 300 degrees west longitude.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
This image from Cassini's radar instrument was acquired by the Cassini radar instrument in synthetic aperture mode during a Sept. 7, 2006, flyby of Titan.
The image shows long, dark ridges similar to those seen in previous flybys. These are interpreted to be longitudinal dunes. Dunes are mostly an equatorial phenomenon on Titan, and the material forming them may be solid organic particles or ice coated with organic material. Spaced up to 3 kilometers (about 2 miles) apart, these dunes curve around bright features that may be high-standing topographic obstacles, in conformity with the wind patterns. The interaction between the two types of features is complex and not well understood, but clearly the topography and the dunes have influenced each other in other ways as well.
This image is centered at 44 degrees west longitude, 8 degrees north latitude and covers approximately 160 by 325 kilometers (99 by 202 miles) on Titan's surface. The smallest details in this image are about 500 meters (about 550 yards) across.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Titan's hazy orange globe hangs before the Cassini spacecraft, partly illuminated -- a world with many mysteries yet to be uncovered.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated 30 degrees to the right. The moon's north pole tilts slightly away from the spacecraft here.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 5, 2008. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 213,000 kilometers (133,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 128 degrees. Image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09833: A World of Questions sur le site de la NASA.
This image was taken during Cassini's very close approach to Titan on Dec. 13, 2004.
The view shows pronounced banding in the Titan atmosphere. The image has been processed to enhance the banding, but a few artifacts of the imaging process, such as the small "doughnut" shape at right, remain.
The image was obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera at a distance of approximately 124,800 kilometers (77,500 miles) from Titan, through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 890 nanometers. The Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle is 15 degrees. The image scale is about 7.5 kilometers (4.6 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
When printed on letter sized paper this poster shows the size of the 'rocks' on Titan's surface in their true size. The left image was taken with the descent imager/spectral radiometer onboard the European Space Agency's Huygens probe. The Huygens image was taken on Jan. 14, 2005.
The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The descent imager/spectral radiometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
Saturn's large, smog-enshrouded moon Titan greets Cassini in full color as the spacecraft makes its third close pass on Feb. 15, 2005.
This view has been rotated so that north on Titan is up. There is a slight difference in brightness from north to south, a seasonal effect that was noted in NASA's Voyager spacecraft images, and is clearly visible in some infrared images from Cassini (see PIA06121). The northern polar region is largely in darkness at this time.
This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera through using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The image was acquired at a distance of approximately 229,000 kilometers (142,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 20 degrees. Resolution in the image is about 14 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer instrument onboard Cassini has found an unusual bright, red spot on Titan.
This dramatic color (but not true color) image was taken during the April 16, 2005, encounter with Titan. North is to the right. In the center it shows the dark lanes of the "H"-shaped feature (see PIA06407) discovered from Earth and first seen by Cassini last July shortly after it arrived in the Saturn system. At the southwestern edge of the "H" feature, near Titan's limb (edge), is an area roughly 500 kilometers (300 miles) across. That area is 50 percent brighter, when viewed using light with a wavelength of 5 microns, than the bright continent-sized area known as Xanadu (see PIA06107).
Xanadu extends to the northwest of the bright spot, beyond the limb (edge) of Titan in this image. Near the terminator (the line between day and night) at the bottom of this image is the 80 kilometer (50 mile) crater that has been previously seen by the Cassini radar, imaging cameras, and the visual and infrared spectrometer (see PIA07868).
At wavelengths shorter than 5 microns, the spot is not unusually bright. The strange spectral character of this enigmatic feature has left the team with four possibilities for its source: the spot could be a surface coloration, a mountain range, a cloud, or a hot spot.
The hot spot hypothesis will be tested during a Titan flyby on July 2, 2006, when the visual and infrared spectrometer will take nighttime images of this area. If it is hot, it will glow at night.
This color image was created from separate images in the 1.7 micron (blue), 2.0 micron (green), and 5.0 micron (red) spectral windows through which it is possible to see Titan's surface. The yellow that humans see has a wavelength of about 0.5 microns, so the colors shown are between 3 and 10 times more red than the human eye can detect.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional information on the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.
This image compares streaked terrain on Titan and Mars. At left is an image from Cassini of the region where the Huygens probe is expected to land. At right is a picture from NASA's Viking 1 orbiter, showing streaks on Mars caused by winds blowing from right to left. The streaks at the Huygens landing site were formed by some kind of fluid, possibly wind, moving from the upper left to lower right (west to east).
The Cassini image was taken on Oct. 26, 2004, by the spacecraft's imaging science subsystem using near-infrared filters. North is 45 degrees to the right of vertical. The scale of this image is 0.83 kilometers (.52 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For the latest news about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. For more information about the mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This image from the Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument on the Cassini spacecraft shows the radar-bright western margin of Xanadu, one of the most prominent features on Titan (see also PIA08425). In radar images, bright regions indicate a rough or scattering material, while a dark region might be smoother or more absorbing. The image was taken during a flyby of Titan on April 30, 2006.
Narrow, sinuous, radar-bright channels, meandering like a maze, are seen on the right-hand-side of the image. These may be river networks that might have flowed onto the dark areas on the left of the image. Vast, dark areas covered by dunes are seen on the equatorial regions of Titan (see PIA03567) and have been referred to as Titan's "sand seas." Near the middle of the image is a radar-bright area that has a boundary with the dark sand seas. Because the radar illumination is coming from the top, this indicates that the bright region, Xanadu, is topographically higher than the sand seas.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
This image of Titan's night side was taken during Cassini's very close flyby of the smoggy moon on Feb. 15, 2005.
The image shows Titan's thick atmosphere illuminated from behind by sunlight. A detached haze layer is visible over the entire globe. The haze layer over the north polar region (at the top) has an unusual structure, a feature that imaging scientists have noticed in earlier flybys but do not yet fully understand.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of visible blue light centered at 460 nanometers. The image was acquired at a distance of approximately 134,000 kilometers (83,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 158 degrees. Resolution in the image is about 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
A high-altitude haze layer residing some 400 kilometers (249 miles) above the surface of Titan is seen here traced along the limb of Titan as silhouetted against the glow of Titan's atmosphere produced by the fluorescence of methane gas. This detached haze layer can be seen as a dark lane imbedded within the gold-colored fluorescent layers of Titan.
This image of Titan's limb and surface was obtained by the Cassini spacecraft's visual infrared mapping spectrometer on Dec. 13, 2004 from a vantage point some 158,000 kilometers (98,177 miles) above the night side of Titan, at a phase angle of 161 degrees. Beneath the fluorescence, Titan's surface at the extreme limb can be seen in blue color, illuminated by 5-micron wavelength sunlight that penetrates the thick atmosphere and hazes to reflect off the limb of Titan. The darkness of the silhouetted haze layer comprised of relatively small particles (less than the 3 micron wavelength of light) suggests to scientists that the particles themselves absorb strongly at the fluorescent wavelength (3.3 microns), and thus are possibly comprised of relatively complex hydrocarbon aerosols generated by photochemical processes in Titan's upper atmosphere.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/.
Voir l'image PIA06997: Haze Silhouettes Against Titan's Glow sur le site de la NASA.
Although it is far too cold for blossoming flowers, summer does bring storm clouds and presumably rain to Titan's south polar region. The observed persistence of convective storm activity in the region during the southern Titan summer has led scientists to speculate that the dark, footprint-shaped feature near upper left could be a past or present reservoir for Titan's methane rains.
This series of three Cassini narrow angle camera images, centered on the pole, shows the evolution of bright clouds in the region over the course of two hours during Cassini's distant June 6, 2005, flyby of the planet-sized moon.
The appearance of the feature seen here is unique among the dark terrains observed thus far on Titan. Other dark areas appear to have angular or diffuse boundaries, while this one possesses a smooth perimeter, suggestive of an eroded shoreline.
In addition to the notion that the dark feature is or was a lake filled with liquid hydrocarbons, scientists have speculated about other possibilities. For instance, it is plausible that the lake is simply a broad depression filled by dark, solid hydrocarbons falling from the atmosphere onto Titan's surface. In this case, the smoothed outline might be the result of a process unrelated to rainfall, such as a sinkhole or a volcanic caldera.
A still image of the south polar region from the same time period is also available (see PIA06241).
The images in this movie sequence were taken using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light, allowing Cassini to see through the obscuring smog of Titan's atmosphere and down to the surface. The images were acquired from an approximate distance of 450,000 kilometers (279,000 miles) from Titan. Resolution in the original images is approximately 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel; the images were aligned and reprocessed at the same scale to create the movie.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
This image was taken with the Cassini Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument on Oct. 28, 2005.
This was the fourth flyby of Titan during which radar images were obtained, and this pass considerably expanded the coverage of Titan's surface.
The swath is about 6,150 kilometers kilometers (3,821 miles) long, extending from 7 degrees north to 18 degrees south latitude and 179 west to 320 west longitude.
The spatial resolution of the radar images ranges from about 300 meters (984 feet) per pixel to about 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) per pixel. It covers the area where the Huygens probe landed (eastern end of the swath), giving geologic context for the landing site.
The most ubiquitous features in this swath are "cat scratches," which are interpreted as longitudinal dunes and were first seen in the February 2005 flyby, see PIA03555.
Also prominent are long, bright ridges, concentrated near the eastern end of the swath. These may be tectonic in origin, and are seen for the first time here. No impact craters are seen, indicating a young surface.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
The Cassini spacecraft has beamed back a new, more detailed image of smog-enshrouded Titan. This view represents an improvement in resolution of nearly three times over the previous Cassini image release of Titan (see PIA05392).
The superimposed coordinate system grid in the accompanying image at right illustrates the geographical regions of the moon that are illuminated and visible, as well as the orientation of Titan. North is up and rotated 25 degrees to the left. The yellow curve marks the position of the boundary between day and night on Titan. This image shows about one quarter of Titan's surface, from 0 to 70 degrees West longitude, and just barely overlaps part of the surface shown in the previous Titan image release. Most of the visible surface in this image has not yet been shown in any Cassini image.
The image was obtained with the narrow angle camera on June 14, 2004, at a phase, or Sun-Titan-spacecraft, angle of 61 degrees and at a distance of 10.4 million kilometers (6.5 million miles) from Titan. The image scale is 62 kilometers (39 miles) per pixel. The image was magnified by a factor of two using a linear interpolation scheme. No further processing to remove the effects of the overlying atmosphere has been performed.
The observed brightness variations are real, on scales of one hundred kilometers or less. The image was obtained in the near-infrared (centered at 938 nanometers) through a polarizing filter. The combination was designed to reduce the obscuration by atmospheric haze. The haze is more transparent at 938 nanometers than at shorter wavelengths, and light of 938 nanometers wavelength is not absorbed by methane gas in Titan's atmosphere. Light at this wavelength consequently samples the surface, and the polarizer blocks out light scattered mainly by the haze. This is similar to the way a polarizer, put on the front of a lens of a hand-held camera, makes distant objects more clear on Earth.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Titan's globally distributed detached haze layer and the moon's north polar hood, both notable details of its thick atmosphere, are clearly seen in this image from the Cassini spacecraft.
Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across, slightly larger than Mercury.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.742 million kilometers (1.083 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 50 degrees. Image scale is 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10546: Titan's North Polar Haze sur le site de la NASA.
This image of Saturn's moon Titan from the Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument on the Cassini spacecraft shows Shikoku Facula, a region that is bright in both radar and visible wavelengths. This radar image was taken on April 30, 2006. For a visible-light image of Shikoku Facula see PIA07752.
A circular feature with a radar-dark interior, probably an impact crater, is seen near the top of the image and is about 35 kilometers (22 miles) in diameter. Numerous linear dark features are seen running across the image, mostly on the right-hand side. These features were seen on other radar images (see PIA08425 and PIA03567) and interpreted as dune fields. Bright, ridge-like features mainly on the lower half of the image may be topographically high regions. Radar-dark, thin, sinuous features, which may be channels draining from the bright to the dark regions, are seen below the circular feature. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer has imaged a huge cloud system covering the north pole of Titan.
This composite image shows the cloud, imaged at a distance of 90,000 kilometers (54,000 miles) during a Dec. 29, 2006, flyby designed to observe the limb of the moon. Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer scanned the limb, revealing this spectacular cloud system. It covers the north pole down to a latitude of 62 degrees north and at all observed longitudes. Such a cloud cover was expected, according to the atmospheric circulation models of Titan, but it had never been observed before with such details. The condensates may be the source of liquids that fill the lakes recently discovered by the radar instrument. This image was color-coded, with blue, green and red at 2 microns, 2.7, and 5 microns, respectively.The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona where this image was produced. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.In this image taken by the Cassini radar system, a previously unseen style of lakes is revealed. The lakes here assume complex shapes and are among the darkest seen so far on Titan.
The lake at the left is reminiscent both in form and scale of the flooded drainage system, Lake Powell in Utah and Arizona. However, the Titan lake has been filled with liquid methane and ethane rather than water. In the lake at right, older terrain may have been deeply cut by river valleys before it was flooded by the embaying lake. For a different radar view from the same flyby see PIA01942.
This radar image was acquired Oct. 9, 2006, and is centered near 80 degrees north latitude, 357 degrees west longitude. It measures about 310 kilometers by 100 kilometers (190 miles by 62 miles). Smallest details in this image are about 500 meters (1,640 feet) across.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
A bright streak of cloud graces the northern skies of Titan.
This is the second time the Cassini spacecraft's imaging cameras have spotted clouds at 60 degrees north latitude on Titan—the previous occasion being the Feb. 2007 observations during which the cameras saw the dark, hydrocarbon lakes that cover much of the north.
That cloud feature is visible at the bottom of the still image in PIA08365.
The circular, 400-kilometer wide impact feature Menrva can be seen near center.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated 26 degrees to the right.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 20, 2008 using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light centered at 938 and 746 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 58 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel. Due to scattering of light by Titan's hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few times larger than the actual pixel scale.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09846: Alien Weather sur le site de la NASA.
This natural color composite was taken during the Cassini spacecraft's April 16, 2005, flyby of Titan. It is a combination of images taken through three filters that are sensitive to red, green and violet light.
It shows approximately what Titan would look like to the human eye: a hazy orange globe surrounded by a tenuous, bluish haze. The orange color is due to the hydrocarbon particles which make up Titan's atmospheric haze. This obscuring haze was particularly frustrating for planetary scientists following the NASA Voyager mission encounters in 1980-81. Fortunately, Cassini is able to pierce Titan's veil at infrared wavelengths (see PIA06228).
North on Titan is up and tilted 30 degrees to the right.
The images to create this composite were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera on April 16, 2005, at distances ranging from approximately 173,000 to 168,200 kilometers (107,500 to 104,500 miles) from Titan and from a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 56 degrees. Resolution in the images is approximately 10 kilometers per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This view from Cassini's second close flyby of Titan on Dec. 13, 2004 shows bright material within the large dark region west of Xanadu. The area in this image is a region that has not previously been seen by Cassini at this high resolution.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera at a distance of approximately 125,900 kilometers (78,200 miles) from Titan, using a filter centered at 938 nanometers that emphasizes the moon's surface and clouds. The image scale is 735 meters (2,400 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
High-altitude haze and perhaps cloud layers are visible in this imaging science subsystem image acquired on Oct. 24, 2004, as the Cassini spacecraft neared its first close encounter with Titan. The image was captured at a distance of about one million kilometers (620,000 miles) using a near-ultraviolet filter, which is sensitive to scattering by small particles.
The Sun preferentially illuminates the southern hemisphere at this time of year, and the northern day-night terminator is visible at the upper boundary. The well-known global detached haze layer, hundreds of kilometers or miles above Titan's surface, is visible as a thin bright ring around the entire planet. This layer is produced by photochemical reactions.
At the northern high-latitude edge of the image, additional striations are visible, caused by particulates that are at a high enough altitude to be illuminated by the Sun near the horizon despite the surface below being in darkness. These striations may simply be caused by wave perturbations propagating through the detached haze, or they may be evidence of additional regional haze or cloud layers not present at other latitudes.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
In a rare moment, the Cassini spacecraft captured this enduring portrait of a near-alignment of four of Saturn's restless moons. Timing is critical when trying to capture a view of multiple bodies, like this one. All four of the moons seen here were on the far side of the rings from the spacecraft when this image was taken; and about an hour later, all four had disappeared behind Saturn.
Seen here are Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) and Dione (1,126 kilometers, or 700 miles across) at bottom; Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across) hugs the rings at center; Telesto (24 kilometers, or 15 miles across) is a mere speck in the darkness above center.
This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 17, 2005, at a distance of approximately 3.4 million kilometers (2.1 million miles) from Titan and 2.5 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Dione. The image scale is 16 kilometers (10 miles) per pixel on Dione and 21 kilometers (13 miles) per pixel on Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.This image depicts Saturn's moon Titan as seen by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer after closest approach on a July 22, 2006, flyby.
The image was generated using the 5 micron wavelength for red, the 2 micron wavelength for green and the 1.2 micron wavelength for blue. The clouds, circled in the annotated version, are of the type seen previously and reported in the journal Science. The image shows the clouds spreading out along the 40-degree-south latitude line.
This image was taken at 160,000 kilometers (99,000 miles) from Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona where this image was produced.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.
This radar image of Titan shows Ganesa Macula, interpreted as a cryovolcano (ice volcano), and its surroundings. Cryovolcanism is thought to have been an important process on Titan and may still be happening today.
This mosaic was made from images obtained by the Cassini radar mapper on two flybys. The lower part of the image was from the flyby on Oct. 26, 2004, while the upper part was from the Jan. 13, 2007, flyby. Ganesa macula is the dark circular feature seen on the lower left of the mosaic. Bright rounded features, interpreted as cryovolcanic flows, are seen towards the top and the right of the mosaic.
This image mosaic was taken in synthetic aperture mode. The resolution of the images is approximately 350 meters (1,150 feet). North is toward the top. The image mosaic is about 570 kilometers (354 miles) wide and 390 kilometers (240 miles) high.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Click on the image for QuickTime Movie of
A View from Huygens - Jan. 14, 2005
This movie was built with data collected during the 147-minute plunge through Titan's thick orange-brown atmosphere to a soft sandy riverbed by the European Space Agency's Huygens Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer on Jan. 14, 2005,
In 4 minutes and 40 seconds, the movie shows what the probe "saw" within the few hours of the descent and the landing. On approach, Titan appeared as just a little disk in the sky among the stars, but after landing, the probe's camera resolved little grains of sand millions of times smaller than Titan.
At first, the Huygens camera just saw fog over the distant surface. The fog started to clear only at about 60 kilometers (37 miles) altitude, making it possible to resolve surface features as large as 100 meters (328 feet). Only after landing could the probe's camera resolve the little grains of sand. The movie provides a glimpse of such a huge change of scale.
A music-only version of the video is available at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA08118_m.mov.
The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The descent imager/spectral radiometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
These images of Titan's south polar region were acquired during Cassini's first distant encounter with the smog-enshrouded moon on July 2, 2004. The spacecraft approached Titan at a distance of about 340,000 kilometers (211,000 miles) during this flyby.
This montage contains pairs of close-up images, with the original images (at left) and also versions in which some of the narrow, dark, curvilinear and rectilinear surface features have been traced by red lines (at right). These dark features may be examples of surface channels and deeper crustal structures such as faults. The longest features (in the third and fourth pairs from the top) extend for as much as 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) across the surface and are as narrow as 10 kilometers (6 miles) across. At the bottom left, a single frame shows a small, dark, circular feature, which could be an impact crater. For reference, the white bar at the bottom right is a 1,000-kilometers-long (620 mile) scale bar.
A large mosaic of this region and the source of the images in this montage is also available (see PIA06203).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Like an ancient mariner charting the coastline of an unexplored wilderness, Cassini's repeated encounters with Titan are turning a mysterious world into a more familiar place.
During a Titan flyby on Sept. 7, 2005, the spacecraft's narrow-angle camera acquired multiple images that were combined to create the mosaic presented here. An annotated version of the mosaic, showing provisional names applied to Titan's features, is also available (see PIA07753).
The image shows more than half of Titan's Saturn-facing hemisphere at moderate resolution, including the Fensal-Aztlan region, formerly "the H." This view is centered at 6.5 degrees north latitude, 20.6 degrees west longitude, and has a pixel scale of about 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel. It is an orthographic projection, rotated so that north on Titan is up.
This view is composed of 20 images obtained on Sept. 7, 2005, each processed to enhance surface detail. The central portion of this mosaic was previously released (see PIA07732).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Cassini's flyby of Titan on July 22, 2006 sent the spacecraft into a more inclined orbit of Saturn. This remarkably clear view from that flyby shows the moon's characteristically dark mid-latitudes, and more southern terrain than the Cassini spacecraft has usually been able to glimpse.
This was the first in a series of "illuminated outbound flybys" of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) where the illuminated hemisphere was visible following the closest approach.
The image was taken in polarized infrared light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 22, 2006 at a distance of approximately 148,000 kilometers (92,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 9 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
Voir l'image PIA08246: Outbound View sur le site de la NASA.
As Cassini approached Titan on Aug. 21, 2005, it captured this natural color view of the moon's orange, global smog. Titan's hazy atmosphere was frustrating to NASA Voyager scientists during the first tantalizing Titan flybys 25 years ago, but now Titan's surface is being revealed by Cassini with startling clarity (see PIA06222).
Images taken with the wide-angle camera using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this color view. The images were acquired at a distance of approximately 213,000 kilometers (132,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 55 degrees. Resolution in the image is about 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
In the distance beyond Saturn's icy rings, the Cassini spacecraft glimpses faint details on the surface of Titan. In the foreground, the B ring displays several dark spokes.
This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 5 degrees below the ringplane.
Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 23, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 853 nanometers. Light at these wavelengths is able to reach the surface and escape back into space without being completely scattered by Titan's hazy atmosphere.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (698,000 miles) from Saturn and 2.4 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from Titan. Image scale on the rings (in the radial, or outward from Saturn, direction) is 67 kilometers (39 miles) per pixel. Image scale is 142 kilometers (88 miles) per pixel on Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10459: Far from Titan sur le site de la NASA.
Bright and dark terrains on Titan's trailing hemisphere are revealed by Cassini's Imaging Science Subsystem in this mosaic of images taken during the T28 flyby in April 2007.
The region shown in this image, centered on the northern part of Titan's trailing hemisphere (near 31.2 degrees North, 220.7 degrees West), had only been seen at very low resolution until February 2007, when Cassini flew over this area for the first time. This mosaic consists of images taken during one of a series of flybys in early 2007 designed to study this long unavailable part of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across).
Several intriguing surface features can be seen in this mosaic that warrant further study. Along the top of the mosaic is a series of dark lineaments, or linear features, that stand out against the blandness of the northern, mid-latitude terrain. These features were also observed by the RADAR instrument in December 2006 and represent an area of potential future co-analysis for the RADAR and camera teams. Another such region is the large bright area known as Adiri at bottom center, also imaged by RADAR in October 2005.
The mosaic shows a number of dark areas within Adiri that line up with small dune fields observed by RADAR. A portion of the dark terrain surrounding Adiri was also observed in 2005 by RADAR, and likewise was found to consist of large stretches of longitudinal dune fields -- further supporting the correlation between equatorial dark regions and dune "seas."
To the east of Adiri is a dark spot surrounded by a ring of bright material, which may be associated with an impact crater similar to Sinlap, discovered earlier in the Cassini mission (see PIA6222).
This mosaic consists of 29 separate frames using a total of 116 images. Each frame consists of three images, taken using a filter sensitive to near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers, allowing for observations of Titan's surface and lower atmosphere, added together. An image taken using a filter sensitive to visible light centered at 619 nanometers was then subtracted from the product, effectively removing the lower atmosphere contribution to the brightness values in the image, increasing image contrast and improving the visibility of surface features.This process is also intended to reduce noise, but some camera artifacts still remain, such as a dark ring caused by dust in the camera system near the bottom right of each frame.
For a wide angle view taken during this Titan encounter, see PIA8943.
The images used for this mosaic were taken on April 11, 2007 from distances ranging from 106,000 to 180,000 kilometers (66,000 to 112,000 miles). This mosaic is in an orthographic projection with a pixel scale of 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) per pixel, although the size of resolvable features is likely several times larger, due to atmospheric scattering. An orthographic view is most like the view seen by a distant observer looking through a telescope.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Like an ancient mariner charting the coastline of an unexplored wilderness, Cassini's repeated encounters with Titan are turning a mysterious world into a more familiar place.
During a Titan flyby on Oct. 28, 2005, the spacecraft's narrow-angle camera acquired multiple images that were combined to create the mosaic presented here. Provisional names applied to Titan's features are shown; an unannotated version of the mosaic is also available (see PIA07754).
The mosaic is a high resolution close-up of two contrasting regions: dark Shangri-La and bright Xanadu. This view has a resolution of 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel and is centered at 2.5 degrees north latitude, 145 degrees west longitude, near the feature called Santorini Facula. The mosaic is composed of 10 images obtained on Oct. 28, 2005, each processed to enhance surface detail. It is an orthographic projection, rotated so that north on Titan is up.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Shown here is a blowup of a region of Titan imaged on July 2, 2004. This image was taken at a distance of 339,000 kilometers (210,600 miles) and shows brightness variations on the surface of Titan and a bright field of clouds near the south pole. The field of clouds is 450 kilometers (280 miles) across and is the about the size of Arizona. Features as small as 10 kilometers (6 miles) can be discerned.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Cassini has found Titan's upper atmosphere to consist of a surprising number of layers of haze, as shown in this ultraviolet image of Titan's night side limb, colorized to look like true color. The many fine haze layers extend several hundred kilometers above the surface. Although this is a night side view, with only a thin crescent receiving direct sunlight, the haze layers are bright from light scattered through the atmosphere.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera. About 12 distinct haze layers can be seen in this image, with a scale of 0.7 kilometers (.43 miles) per pixel. The limb shown here is at about 10 degrees south latitude, in the equatorial region.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Synthetic aperture radar images obtained in February 2005 show that Titan's surface is modified by fluid flows and wind-driven deposits. Previous synthetic aperture radar images have shown features that may be cryovolcanic in origin, such as long flows (see PIA06993) and linear features that may have formed by tectonic processes (see PIA06995).
The latest data argue that Titan has a young and dynamic surface that is modified by all four major geologic processes: volcanism, tectonism, erosion, and impact cratering. All surfaces of solid bodies are shaped by these four processes, and Cassini-Huygens is revealing how each has contributed to the Titan we see today.
The data show a variety of surface drainage patterns that include twisting channels 1 to 2 kilometers-wide (0.6 to 1.2 miles) and up to 200-kilometers-long (124 miles). There is a well-developed drainage pattern associated with a large (450-kilometer, or 280 mile-diameter) basin that has eroded part of the basin's rim on the lower right of the image. These patters are in much larger scales than those imaged by the Huygens probe.
The most surprising new features revealed in the synthetic aperture images are dark lineated streaks, dubbed "cat scratches," which are seen in patches throughout the whole radar swath image (see PIA07009). The "scratches" are interpreted as linear/longitudinal dunes formed by wind transport. Radar images of terrestrial dunes, such as snow dunes in Antarctica, show remarkably similar patterns. Individual "scratches" are 500 meters to 1 kilometer (1,640 feet to 0.6 miles) across and spaced by 1 to 2 kilometer intervals (0.6 to 1.2-mile), straight or undulated, and oriented roughly east-west, suggesting a direction of prevalent winds.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Titan bears a distinct east-west banded pattern in this Cassini spacecraft image taken in the ultraviolet.
The ultraviolet wavelength allows Cassini to see Titan's stratosphere, where superrotation--in which the atmosphere moves around the moon faster than Titan rotates -- is strong. The recent appearance of this feature may be a harbinger of seasonal change on Titan.
The moon's halo -- its detached, high-altitude global haze layer -- is visible here as well, and is often its most prominent feature in such ultraviolet views.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated 6 degrees to the right in this image.
The view was obtained by the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of polarized ultraviolet light. The view was acquired on Dec. 25, 2006 at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 123 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
High northern terrain on Titan is made visible by some image processing sleight of hand.
The view is the product of a ratio between Titan images taken using two different spectral filters. This process improves the visibility of surface features on Titan by removing the effect of shading from differing lighting angles. Features nearest the terminator (the line between night and day) receive the greatest improvement in terms of visibility.
In this particular frame, the process also makes visible features beyond the terminator. These features are illuminated by scattered light in the atmosphere, as during twilight on Earth. By this processing technique, surface features near the north pole can be viewed a full year-and-a-half before they are illuminated directly by the Sun.
In most processed views of Titan, this ratio procedure produces images that show only the surface, and indeed, most of the features visible here are on the ground. However, the high altitude haze layers in Titan's north polar region are darker in the shorter wavelength image used to create this special product. This difference in brightness results in the bright latitudinal band seen here. The banding in the north polar haze layers can be seen in PIA08907.
In the high north lie the large, dark features thought to be seas of liquid methane or ethane. Along the bottom of the image are Titan's equatorial dark regions, also thought to be seas -- but instead of liquid, they are seas of longitudinal dunes.
The view is toward terrain centered at 34 degrees north latitude on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across).
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 29, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.5 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 9 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel. Due to scattering of light by Titan's hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few times larger than the actual pixel scale.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Looking toward high northern latitudes on Titan, the Cassini spacecraft spies a banded pattern encircling the pole. This sort of feature is what scientists expect to see in the stratosphere of Titan, where the atmosphere is superrotating, or moving around the moon faster than the moon itself rotates.
Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were taken by the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 28, 2007 at a distance of approximately 196,000 kilometers (122,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 12 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This image shows Titan, Saturn's largest moon (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles, across), with a streak-like cloud near its south pole. The cloud may be part of a region of polar clouds seen during Cassini's first flyby of Titan in July 2004, only now covering a larger area.
Titan's atmosphere, like that of Earth, is mostly nitrogen. The pressure at Titan's surface is 50 percent higher than on Earth, despite its lower gravity, meaning that the mass of the atmosphere per unit area is more than ten times that on Earth.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Sept. 23, 2004, at a distance of 7.1 million kilometers (4.4 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 84 degrees. The image scale is 42 kilometers (26 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
The probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Titan's fast-rotating atmosphere creates circumpolar bands in the north.
The Cassini spacecraft acquired this view of the smoggy moon following a flyby of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) on March 26, 2007.
The image was taken in visible violet light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera at a distance of approximately 275,000 kilometers (171,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 33 kilometers (20 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This side-by-side image shows a Cassini radar image (on the left) of what is the largest body of liquid ever found on Titan's north pole, compared to Lake Superior (on the right). This close-up is part of a larger image (see PIA09182) and offers strong evidence for seas on Titan. These seas are most likely liquid methane and ethane.
This feature on Titan is at least 100,000 square kilometers (39,000 square miles), which is greater in extent than Lake Superior (82,000 square kilometers or 32,000 square miles), which is one of Earth's largest lakes. The feature covers a greater fraction of Titan than the largest terrestrial inland sea, the Black Sea. The Black Sea covers 0.085 percent of the surface of the Earth; this newly observed body on Titan covers at least 0.12 percent of the surface of Titan. Because of its size, scientists are calling it a sea.
The image on the right is from the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) project, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Frigid Titan continues to prove itself a remarkably complex and dynamic world. Here, bright clouds are seen encircling the moon's north polar region.
The Cassini spacecraft has revealed the presence of great lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons on this part of Titan's surface (see PIA08365 and PIA08930). An extended, high-altitude haze hovers above the limb of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) at top of the image.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 26, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 786,000 kilometers (488,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10434: Polar Clouds on Titan sur le site de la NASA.
The three mosaics shown here were composed with data from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer taken during the last three Titan flybys, on Oct. 28, 2005 (left image), Dec. 26, 2005 (middle image), and Jan. 15, 2006 (right image).
These false-color images were constructed from images taken at the following wavelengths: 1.6 microns (blue), 2.01 (green), and 5 microns (red).
The viewing geometry of the December flyby is roughly on Titan's opposite hemisphere from the flybys in October and January. There are several important features to note in the images. The first is that the south polar cloud system was very bright during the December flyby, while during the October and January flybys, it is barely visible, indicating that the atmosphere over Titan's south pole is very dynamic.
In the December (middle) mosaic, a north polar hood that is bright at 5 microns is visible. Its composition is unknown. The north polar hood is barely seen in the October (left image) and January (right image) data. Visible in the October and January images just south of the equator is Tui Reggio, a region nicknamed the "chevron." This region is very bright at 5 microns and is among the brightest features on Titan at that wavelength. Tui Reggio is thought to be a surface deposit, probably of volcanic origin, and may be water and/or carbon dioxide frozen from the vapor. The January flyby data show that the western margins of Tui Reggio have a complex flow-like character consistent with eruptive phenomena.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.
The Cassini spacecraft catches a glimpse of features that reveal important clues about processes occurring in Titan's atmosphere.
The north polar stratosphere exhibits a banded appearance, as fast-moving clouds whirl around the giant moon. The moon's halo -- its detached, high-altitude global haze layer -- is faintly visible here as well.
Planet-sized Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized ultraviolet light. The image was obtained on May 15, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 25 degrees. Image scale is 15 kilometers (10 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This map of the surface of Saturn's moon Titan illustrates the regions that will be imaged by Cassini during the spacecraft's fourth (and third very close) flyby of the smoggy moon on Feb. 15, 2005. At closest approach, Cassini is expected to pass approximately 1,580 kilometers (982 miles) above the moon's surface.
The colored lines delineate the regions that will be imaged at differing resolutions. The lower resolution imaging sequences (outlined in blue) are designed to study the atmosphere, clouds and surface in a variety of spectral filters. Other areas have been specifically targeted for creation of mosaics based on moderate resolution images of surface features. Two small areas (outlined in yellow) will be seen at high resolution by Cassini's narrow angle camera, and will be jointly covered by the visual and mapping spectrometer experiment. These high resolution targets also overlap areas covered by the Cassini radar altimetry and synthetic aperture radar experiments.
The site where the Huygens probe landed in mid-January will be imaged at lower resolution during this flyby and is within the terrain in the extreme western part of the coverage area. The low-resolution imaging coverage will extend farther east than the previous two close flybys in October and December 2004. Some areas covered at moderate resolution during previous flybys have been targeted again to allow Cassini scientists to look for changes.
The map shows only brightness variations on Titan's surface (the illumination is such that there are no shadows and no shading due to topographic variations). Previous observations indicate that, due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few to five times larger than the actual pixel scale labeled on the map.
The map was made from global images taken in June 2004, at image scales of 35 to 88 kilometers (22 to 55 miles) per pixel, and south polar coverage from July 2004, at an image scale of 2 kilometers (1.3 miles) per pixel. The images were obtained using a narrow band filter centered at 938 nanometers - a near-infrared wavelength (invisible to the human eye) at which light can penetrate Titan's atmosphere to reach the surface and return through the atmosphere to be detected by the camera. The images have been processed to enhance surface details.
It is currently northern winter on Titan, so the moon's high northern latitudes are not illuminated, resulting in the lack of coverage north of 45 degrees north latitude. Clouds near the south pole (see PIA06110) have also been removed (south of -75 degrees).
At 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across, Titan is one of the solar system's largest moons.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
The Voyager project is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA.
Voir l'image PIA00733: Titan's Brighter Southern Hemisphere sur le site de la NASA.
Click on the image for full resolution movie
Radar Shows Evidence of Seas
(Half Resolution)
This movie, comprised of several detailed images taken by Cassini's radar instrument, shows bodies of liquid near Titan's north pole. These images show that many of the features commonly associated with lakes on Earth, such as islands, bays, inlets and channels, are also present on this cold Saturnian moon. They offer strong evidence that larger bodies seen in infrared images are, in fact, seas. These seas are most likely liquid methane and ethane.
For more than two decades, scientists have debated whether liquids on Titan exist, and if so, where they would be located. Pre-Cassini observations from the 1980s indicated that something on Titan's surface must be re-supplying the methane to its atmosphere. A global ocean was once hypothesized. Subsequently, disconnected lakes or seas were predicted. The discovery of numerous lakes near Titan's north pole by the Cassini radar instrument in July 2006 has confirmed the latter idea, and indicates an apparent preference during the current season for liquids to be located near the north pole.
These new observations of the north polar area show how extensive and widespread these lakes are, and reveal at least one body of liquid that might rightly be called a sea. These seas cover an area about 100,000 square kilometers (about 39,000 square miles), larger than the largest Great Lake, Lake Superior, near the U.S. and Canadian border, whose area is 82,000 square kilometers (about 32,000 square miles). Analysis of the data indicates that the bodies of liquid may be tens of meters in depth.
This high-definition video offers a trip through the north polar area just as Cassini radar saw it. It combines radar swaths seen on several Titan passes: July 22, 2006 (T16); Sept. 23, 2006 (T18); Oct. 9, 2006 (T19); and Feb. 22, 2007 (T25), respectively. The mosaic reveals the extent of the lakes, their shapes and interconnections. The areas believed to be composed of liquids are shown in blue as an aid to interpretation.
The movie begins with an illustration of the relative orbits of Titan and Cassini, both circling Saturn. The spacecraft is seen approaching the planet with a nodding motion as its antenna scans the moon's surface, turning to keep its target in sight. The animation shows all radar swaths, and zooms in for a close look at the many complex shapes the lakes take. Some features that resemble lakes with no liquid may be remnants that have already dried as the northern winter fades into spring.
The resolution of the radar data varies from several kilometers to as fine as 300 meters (984 feet). The coverage shown in the video spans from 50 degrees north latitude, almost to the pole, where a small triangular gap in coverage misses the exact pole.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Bright mid-latitude clouds near the bottom of this view hint at the ongoing cycling of methane on Titan. These cloud streaks are near the same latitude as similar clouds observed above different longitudes on Titan.
The view is centered on Titan's trailing hemisphere, over the 1,700 kilometer (1,050 mile) wide bright region known as Adiri.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated 15 degrees to the right.
This view was created by combining multiple images taken using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 939 and 742 nanometers
The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on May 13, 2007 at a distance of approximately 104,000 kilometers (65,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 12 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel. Due to scattering of light by Titan's hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few times larger than the actual pixel scale.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Figure 1: Titan Crater in Three Views
This three-panel image shows one of Titan's most prominent impact craters in an infrared-wavelength image (left), radar image (center) and in the false-color image (right). The Cassini radar imaged this crater during Cassini's third flyby of Titan, on Feb. 15, 2005, (see PIA07368). The crater, located at 16 degrees west, 11 degrees north, is about 80 kilometers (50 miles) in diameter and is surrounded beyond that by a blanket of material thrown out of the crater during impact. In radar, brighter surfaces mean rougher terrains, or else terrains tilted toward the radar.
Two Titan flybys later, on April 16, the visual infrared mapping spectrometer on Cassini obtained images of the same crater. The panel on the left is an image at the 2.0 micron wavelength, showing that the crater has a dark floor and a small bright area in the center. The crater is surrounded by bright material, which has a very faint halo slightly darker than the surrounding dark material. Compare the radar image with the visual infrared mapping spectrometer image. Both the crater and the blanket of surrounding material (called ejecta) are bright at radar wavelengths; in the infrared, the crater itself is dark and this blanket of material is quite bright. In radar, the faint halo surrounding the blanket of material is quite similar in appearance to the rest of the ejecta blanket.
The right hand panel is a false-color visual infrared mapping spectrometer image of the crater at lower resolution. It shows the faint halo to be slightly bluer than surrounding material. That the material is bluer than its surroundings, while also being darker, suggests that the faint halo is somewhat different in composition. This suggests that the composition of Titan's upper crust varies with depth, and various materials were excavated when the crater was formed.
The same structure appearing so different to different instruments illustrates the importance of multiple instruments studying such phenomena. The Cassini spacecraft, being the most interdisciplinary spacecraft ever flown, strongly embodies such an approach.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/.
This global digital map of Titan was created using data taken by the Cassini spacecraft Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS).
The data here consist of images taken using a filter centered at 938 nanometers, allowing researchers to examine albedo (or inherent brightness) variations across the surface of Titan. Due to the scattering of light by Titan's dense atmosphere, no topographic shading is visible in these images.
The map is an equidistant projection and has a scale of 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) per pixel. Equidistant projections preserve distances on a body, with some distortion of area and direction. Actual resolution varies greatly across the map, with the best coverage (close to the map scale) near the center and edges of the map and the worst coverage on the trailing hemisphere (centered around 270 degrees west longitude).
Coverage should improve in some of the poorly covered areas starting in February 2007, when northern Belet, Adiri, and Dilmun will be imaged. Imaging coverage in the northern polar region, currently blank on this map, will improve over the next few years, as Titan approaches vernal equinox in August 2009.
The mean radius of Titan used for projection of this map is 2,575 kilometers (1,600 miles). Until a control network is created for Titan, the satellite is assumed to be spherical.
The named features are designated by the International Astronomical Union. (A "facula" on Titan is a bright spot; a "macula" is a dark spot.)
This map demonstrates how our knowledge of Titan's surface has been vastly improved since Cassini arrived and began mapping the outsize moon. See PIA06086 for an earlier Cassini map of Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Straining to make out the surface of Titan through its murky atmosphere, the Cassini spacecraft's wide angle camera manages to exploit one of the infrared spectral windows where the particulate smog is transparent enough for a peek.
The Senkyo region is visible in the north, while Mezzoramia lies to the south in this view of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across). (See the December 2006 Map of Titan at PIA08346.)
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 939 nanometers. The image was taken on Jan. 29, 2007 at a distance of approximately 79,000 kilometers (49,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This short animation is made up from a sequence of images taken by the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR) instrument on board ESA's Huygens probe, during its successful descent to Titan on Jan. 14, 2005.
It shows what a passenger riding on Huygens would have seen. The sequence starts from an altitude of 152 kilometers (about 95 miles) and initially only shows a hazy view looking into thick cloud. As the probe descends, ground features can be discerned and Huygens emerges from the clouds at around 30 kilometers (about 19 miles) altitude. The ground features seem to rotate as Huygens spins slowly underits parachute.
The DISR consists of a downward-looking High Resolution Imager (HRI), a Medium Resolution Imager (MRI), which looks out at an angle, and a Side Looking Imager (SLI). For this animation, most images used were captured by the HRI and MRI. Once on the ground, the final landing scene was captured by the SLI.
The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer is one of two NASA instruments on the probe.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Descent Imager/Spectral team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer visit http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/.
During a recent pass of Saturn's moon Titan, one of more than 40 during Cassini's planned four-year mission, the spacecraft acquired this infrared view of the bright Xanadu region and the moon's south pole. Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
Southeast of Xanadu (and above the center in this view) is a peculiar semi-circular feature informally referred to by imaging scientists as "the Smile." This surface feature is the brightest spot on Titan's surface, not only to the imaging science subsystem cameras, but also to the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer instrument, which sees the surface at even longer wavelengths (see PIA07876). The Smile is 560 kilometers (345 miles) wide.
At the landing site of the successful Huygens probe mission, brighter regions correspond to icy upland areas, while the darker regions are lowlands that possess a higher proportion of the organic byproducts of Titan's atmospheric photochemistry. Those results seem to confirm the long-standing hypothesis that Xanadu is a relatively high region of less contaminated ice. However, the cause of the even brighter Smile is a mystery that is still under study.
Farther south, a field of bright clouds arcs around the pole, moving at a few meters per second. Around the limb (edge), Cassini peers through Titan's smoggy, nitrogen-rich atmosphere.
North in this image is toward the upper left.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 4, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.2 million kilometers (700,000 miles) from Titan using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The image scale is 7 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
This radar image of the surface of Saturn's moon Titan was acquired on October 26, 2004, when the Cassini spacecraft flew approximately 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) above the surface and acquired radar data for the first time. It reveals a complex geologic surface thought to be composed of icy materials and hydrocarbons.
A wide variety of geologic terrain types can be seen on the image; brighter areas may correspond to rougher terrains and darker areas are thought to be smoother. A large dark circular feature is seen at the western (left) end of the image, but very few features resembling fresh impact craters are seen. This suggests that the surface is relatively young. Enigmatic sinuous bright linear features are visible, mainly cutting across dark areas.
The image is about 150 kilometers (93 miles) wide and 250 kilometers (155 miles) long, and is centered at 50 N, 82 W in the northern hemisphere of Titan, over a region that has not yet been imaged optically. The smallest details seen on the image are about 300 meters (984 feet) across.
The data were acquired in the synthetic aperture radar mode of Cassini's radar instrument. In this mode, radio signals are bounced off the surface of Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The instrument team is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
For the latest news about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. For more information about the mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Titan shines beyond the rings like a brilliant ring of fire, its light gleaming here and there through the gaps in Saturn's magnificent plane of ice.
Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is surrounded by a thick photochemical haze which scatters the Sun's light.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 11, 2006 at a distance of approximately 5.3 million kilometers (3.3 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 158 degrees. Image scale is 32 kilometers (20 miles) per pixel on Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
A view of Huygens' probable landing site based on initial, best-guess estimates. Scientists on the Huygens Descent Imager/ Spectral Radiometer (DISR) science team are still working to refine the exact location of the probe's landing site, but they estimate that it lies within the white circle shown in this image.
The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer is one of two NASA instruments on the probe.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Descent Imager/Spectral team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer visit http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/.
A network of river channels is located atop Xanadu, the continent-sized region on Saturn's moon Titan. This radar image was captured by the Cassini Radar Mapper on April 30, 2006.
These winding, meandering river channels start from the top of the image and run like a fork in the road, splitting to the right and left of the image. At Titan's chilly conditions, streams of methane and/or ethane might flow across parts of the region.
The picture is roughly 230 kilometers (143 miles) wide by 340 kilometers (211 miles) long, and shows features as small as 500 meters (1,640 feet).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Shown here are two images of the expected landing site of Cassini's Huygen's probe (latitude 10.6 S, longitude 191 W). At right is a wide-angle image showing most of Titan's disc, with a scale of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) per pixel. At left is a narrow-angle image of the landing site at a scale of 0.83 kilometers (.5 miles) per pixel (location shown by black box at right). North is tilted about 45 degrees from the top of both images. The surface has bright and dark markings with a streamlined pattern consistent with motion from a fluid, such as the atmosphere, moving from west to east (upper left to lower right). The image at left is 400 kilometers (249 miles) wide. Both images were taken by Cassini's imaging science subsystem through near-infrared filters.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
A huge annular feature with an outer diameter of approximately 440 kilometers (273 miles) appears in this image taken with Cassini's Titan radar mapper. It resembles a large crater or part of a ringed basin, either of which could be formed when a comet or asteroid tens of kilometers in size slammed into Titan. This is the first impact feature identified in radar images of Titan.
The surface of Titan appears to be very young compared to other Saturnian satellites. In Titan's case, debris raining down from the atmosphere or other geologic processes may mask or remove the craters. The pattern of brightness suggests that there is topography associated with this feature; for example, in the center of the image there appear to be mounds each about 25 kilometers (15 miles) across. Since they are dark on their lower edges that face away from the radar and bright on the opposite face, they must be elevated above the surrounding terrain.
This image is a part of a larger swath acquired on Feb. 15, 2005, on Cassini's second opportunity to map Titan's surface via radar. Seams between radar segments are visible as horizontal, sawtooth-shaped lines.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Shadows cast by Saturn's rings separate the planet's bright equatorial band from the darker northern latitudes.
This view makes use of a spectral filter sensitive to absorption of certain wavelengths of light by methane in Saturn's atmosphere. In the north, the light at these wavelengths reaches slightly greater depth before being reflected off the cloud tops, compared to the equatorial region -- and it passes through more light-absorbing methane along the way.
The innermost rings arc across the lower left corner.
The view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 37 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 18, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 890 nanometers.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09859: High Cloud, Low Cloud sur le site de la NASA.
These images, taken during Cassini's first close flyby of Titan, show details never before seen on Titan's mysterious surface.
The large, bottom image shows a complex interplay between dark and bright material on Titan's surface. This image was taken at a range of about 340,000 kilometers (211,000 miles), and the entire view is approximately 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) across. The surface appears to have been shaped by multiple geologic processes. Although a few circular features can be seen, there are no features that can be definitively identified as impact craters. Cassini scientists are studying these and other images acquired during the flyby to understand the nature and origins of the intriguing features.
The three smaller images show details of some of the features seen within the larger scene. The image on the upper right shows a scene approximately 500 kilometers (311 miles) across in which bright and dark bands of material span east to west. The upper middle and upper right images show bright material surrounded by dark material in scenes approximately 300 kilometers (186 miles) across. Very narrow, dark bands can be seen crossing the bright terrain. These features are approximately 2 kilometers (1.2 mile) across and up to a few hundred kilometers long. The dark circular feature that appears at the top of each of the upper images is a camera artifact that was not removed by the preliminary image processing.
The tops of the images point to the northwest. The Sun is illuminating Titan from nearly behind the spacecraft, and there are no shadows or topographic shading visible in these images. All shading is due to surface brightness contrasts. The images were captured by Cassini's imaging science subsystem through near-infrared filters.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This radar image shows the entire scene in which hydrocarbon lakes were first discovered on Titan, near its north pole (see PIA08630). This image was acquired on July 22, 2006, by Cassini's radar instrument in synthetic aperture mode.
The most striking landforms are the lakes: dark patches, some circular, some irregular, many with apparently steep rims, over much of the terrain north of 70 degrees latitude. The most convincing lake forms occur at the narrowest, central part of the scene, which is at the highest latitudes. Here they have short, stubby channels leading into them, and brighter areas within that indicate either dried-up lakes or that we are seeing through a transparent liquid.
The image also shows the considerable variation in the kinds of surface features found at different latitudes. Beginning at the left (20 degrees north by 142 degrees west) and heading north, a circular feature about 75 kilometers (47 miles) in diameter is seen, which could be either an impact crater or a volcanic caldera. Other less distinct circular forms are seen next, possibly including some dried lakes, followed by some ridge-like terrain with dark meandering channels or valleys. The dark lakes begin to appear next (at about 70 degrees north), with more distinct lakes in the middle of the scene, where the swath is closest to the pole and starts to descend to the south. Farther on, apparently dry lakes and canyons begin to dominate, and the region becomes more complex and etched. At the extreme right end, dunes similar to those seen previously mingle with brighter features. The swath ends at 13 degrees north by 347 degrees west.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
This image is a portion of the swath acquired by the Cassini Titan radar mapper on Feb. 15, 2005, on the mission's second opportunity to image the surface with radar.
The frame, measuring about 300 kilometers (186 miles) from top to bottom, shows an area near the northeast corner of the large optically bright region named Xanadu.
Running across the image are a series of roughly parallel, mostly east-west dark linear features that join and separate, which are not seen in the previous radar images. They may be formed by the action of eastward-flowing winds, or geologic processes acting on the crust itself. In places they cut through adjacent terrain, while elsewhere the lineaments seem to be interrupted by brighter material, appearing again on the other side. Seams between radar segments are visible as horizontal, sawtooth-shaped lines.
Bright material in radar images may be rough or sloped toward the radar (which is observing from the top in this frame). Also, some of what is seen may in fact be below the surface, revealed as the radio waves penetrate overlying, radar-transparent material.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Peering through Titan's thick haze, the Cassini spacecraft glimpses boundaries between bright and dark terrain on the moon's trailing hemisphere. The bright terrain at bottom is in northwestern Adiri.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated about 15 degrees to the right.
This view was created by combining multiple images taken using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 and 619 nanometers. Some processing artifacts remain in the finished image, including the two small, dark circles below and right of center.
The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 13, 2007 at a distance of approximately 237,000 kilometers (147,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel. Due to scattering of light by Titan's hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few times larger than the actual pixel scale.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This image composite was created with images taken during the Cassini spacecraft's closest flyby of Titan on April 16, 2005. Cassini's cameras have numerous filters that reveal features above and beneath the shroud of Titan's atmosphere.
This monochrome view shows what Titan looks like at 938 nanometers, a near-infrared wavelength that allows Cassini to see through the hazy atmosphere and down to the surface. The view was created by combining three separate images taken with this filter, in order to improve the visibility of surface features. The variations in brightness on the surface are real differences in the reflectivity of the materials on Titan.
North on Titan is up and tilted 30 degrees to the right.
These images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera on April 16, 2005, at distances ranging from approximately 173,000 to 168,200 kilometers (107,500 to 104,500 miles) from Titan and from a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 56 degrees. Resolution in the images is approximately 10 kilometers per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
p>This radar image of Titan's well-known dunes is distinctive because it may show an age relationship between different classes of features on the surface of this frigid world.
Taken by Cassini's radar mapper on Jan. 13, 2007, during a flyby of Titan, three kinds of terrain can be seen. Throughout the image, the fine striping has been identified as dunes, possibly made from organic material and formed by wind activity. Dunes are a common landform on Titan (see PIA09111 and PIA08738). The bright material at the lower right of the image is interpreted as being topographically higher than the dunes that go around it, and several circular features seen at the top center may be craters that are slowly being buried by the dunes. Since the dunes seem to lie over the craters, the dune activity probably occurred later in time.
This image was taken in synthetic aperture mode and has a resolution of approximately 350 meters (1,150 feet). North is toward the top left corner of the image, which is approximately 160 kilometers (100 miles) long by 150 kilometers (90 miles) wide.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
This image shows one of the closest views of Xanadu Regio, a large bright region on Titan's surface, which also can be seen in a more distant view taken earlier (see PIA06185).
In this close-up view, brightness variations can be seen within Xanadu. The bright material on Titan is thought to be more water-ice rich, while darker regions may indicate areas where more hydrocarbon-rich material has collected. It is not clear from the patterns seen here what processes caused them. However, this image is just a single piece of a larger 5 by 5-frame mosaic that covers the western part of Xanadu and the dark area that lies farther to the west. When the complete mosaic is assembled, larger-scale patterns may be identified that will help to reveal the processes that have shaped Titan's surface.
The area shown here is approximately 700 kilometers (435 miles) across, centered at roughly 16 south, 133 west on Titan.
Three narrow-angle camera images taken with the Cassini spacecraft in wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers were combined to create this view. The images were acquired during a close encounter with Titan on Feb. 15, 2005, at a distance of approximately 114,000 kilometers (71,000 miles) from Titan, which corresponds to a image scale of 680 meters (2,231 feet) per pixel. As a result of scattering within Titan's atmosphere, the scale of surface features that can actually be resolved at this range is several kilometers. The Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle was 20 degrees when these images were acquired.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This global digital map of Titan was created using images taken by the Cassini spacecraft imaging science subsystem.
The images were taken using a filter centered at 938 nanometers, allowing researchers to examine albedo (or inherent brightness) variations across the surface of Titan. Due to the scattering of light by Titan's dense atmosphere, no topographic shading is visible in these images.
The map is an equidistant projection and has a scale of 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) per pixel. Actual resolution varies greatly across the map, with the best coverage (close to the map scale) near the center and edges of the map and the worst coverage on the trailing hemisphere (centered around 270 degrees west longitude).
Imaging coverage in the northern polar region is only just beginning to improve, and will continue to do so over the next couple of years, as Titan approaches vernal equinox in August 2009 and the north pole comes out of shadow. Large, dark and presumably liquid-hydrocarbon-filled seas are becoming visible at high latitudes (see also PIA08365).
The mean radius of Titan used for projection of this map is 2,575 kilometers (1,600 miles). Until a control network is created for Titan, the moon is assumed to be spherical.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, peeks out from under the planet's rings of ice.
This view looks toward Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) from slightly beneath the ringplane. The dark Encke gap (325 kilometers, or 200 miles wide) is visible here, as is the narrow F ring.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 28, 2006 at a distance of approximately 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Titan. Image scale is 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel on Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
The six close-up views of Titan's surface shown here are composed of images acquired by the Cassini spacecraft during flybys in October (see PIA06158) and December (see PIA06159) of 2004. These close-up views illustrate that a variety of processes have shaped the surface of Titan, just as diverse geologic processes are responsible for what we see on Earth's surface.
Image (a) shows a prominent bright-dark boundary near the western edge of the Xanadu region which exhibits a sharp, angular edge between the materials. Three bright, discontinuous circles can be seen (two near the top of the image and another near the lower left). These may be large impact craters; the upper two are approximately 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) in diameter and the lower one is approximately 50 kilometers (30 miles) in diameter. Titan's thick atmosphere will screen out small projectiles, but if the surface were as old as Titan itself, it should have many more craters of these sizes. Therefore, Cassini scientists think that, like Earth's surface, Titan's surface has been modified more recently by other geologic processes. However, such processes on Titan may take much longer than on Earth, acting over hundreds of millions of years.
Image (b) shows bright features that appear to be streamlined as if were they formed by winds in Titan's atmosphere moving from west to east. The landing site of the Huygens probe is in the upper left corner of this image (see PIA07239).
Image (c) shows a bright feature surrounded by dark material. Several long, dark and narrow lines running through the bright area may be larger examples of the dark channels seen by the Huygens probe (see PIA07236). These lines are on the order of 2 kilometers (1 mile) wide, and tens of kilometers long.
Image (d) shows dark material within the bright area to the west of Xanadu. The linear nature of these features suggests that they may have formed by faulting. They may be dark due to modification by other surface processes occurring on Titan, in the same way that on Earth, fault-lines can be enhanced by erosion and/or deposition of material by water and wind.
Image (e) shows brightness variations in the region southeast of the Huygens landing site. The features indicated by arrows exhibit shapes that are similar to drainage patterns seen on Earth and Mars, where the source of the liquid is underground springs rather than rainfall.
Image (f) shows a region near the northwestern edge of Xanadu where the boundary between the bright and dark materials is quite complicated. Here some of the bright patches appear as if they represent thin surface plates that have been broken apart and spread apart over underlying dark material.
The white bars above each image are 200 kilometers (124 miles) long. Imaging Titan through its thick atmosphere is a challenge, and the narrow, straight lines within the images are seams between individual images that have not been completely removed. North is to the top of each frame.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This poetic scene shows the giant, smog-enshrouded moon Titan behind Saturn's nearly edge-on rings. Much smaller Epimetheus (116 kilometers, or 72 miles across) is just visible to the left of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across).
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 9, 2006, at a distance of approximately 4.1 million kilometers (2.5 million miles) from Titan. The image scale is 25 kilometers (16 miles) per pixel on Titan. The brightness of Epimetheus was enhanced for visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Like an ancient mariner charting the coastline of an unexplored wilderness, Cassini's repeated encounters with Titan are turning a mysterious world into a more familiar place.
During a Titan flyby on Sept. 7, 2005, the spacecraft's narrow-angle camera acquired multiple images that were combined to create the mosaic presented here. Provisional names applied to Titan's features are shown; an unannotated version of the mosaic is also available (see PIA07755).
The image shows more than half of Titan's Saturn-facing hemisphere at moderate resolution, including the Fensal-Aztlan region, formerly "the H." This view is centered at 6.5 degrees north latitude, 20.6 degrees west longitude, and has a pixel scale of about 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel. It is an orthographic projection, rotated so that north on Titan is up.
This view is composed of 20 images obtained on Sept. 7, 2005, each processed to enhance surface detail. The central portion of this mosaic was previously released without labels (see PIA07732).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Within the windswept wastes of Titan's equatorial dune desert lies the 1,700-km (1,050-mi) wide bright region called Adiri, seen here at center. The intrepid Huygens probe landed off the northeastern edge of Adiri in January 2005.
This view looks toward the anti-Saturn side of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) -- the side that always faces away from Saturn as the moon orbits. North on Titan is up and rotated 26 degrees to the right.
The image was taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 939 nanometers. The view was acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on June 14, 2007 at a distance of approximately 157,000 kilometers (98,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 9 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This mosaic of Titan's south polar region was acquired during Cassini's first and distant encounter with the smog-enshrouded moon on July 2, 2004. The spacecraft approached Titan at a distance of about 340,000 kilometers (211,000 miles) during this flyby.
This is a contrast-enhanced version of a previously released image (see PIA06109), which allows surface details to be seen more easily. The very bright features near the south pole are clouds.
Due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few to five times larger than the actual pixel scale. At this distance, pixel scale is 2 kilometers (about 1 mile), so features larger than several kilometers across are resolved in the images.
A montage containing pairs of close-up images from this mosaic is also available (see PIA06202).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Cassini acquired this view of Titan on April 13, 2007, following a flyby of the Mercury-sized moon. Titan's equatorial dark regions are visible in this view, along with faint, dark lineaments (linear features) in the otherwise bland-looking terrain of the north. Near the terminator are the dark, lake-like features identified in Cassini flybys early in 2007 (see PIA08365).
To the east of the lake-like features is a bright patch of clouds that likely consist of a mixture of methane and ethane.
This view of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is an orthographic reprojection centered on 27.4 degrees north latitude. An orthographic view is most like the view seen by a distant observer looking through a telescope.
The view was obtained using a filter sensitive to near-infrared light centered at 939 nanometers, allowing for observations of Titan's surface and lower atmosphere, added together. An image taken using a filter sensitive to visible light centered at 619 nanometers was then subtracted from the product, effectively removing the lower atmosphere contribution to the brightness values in the image, increasing image contrast and improving the visibility of surface features.
The Cassini spacecraft acquired this view with its narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 1.2 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 7 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This short movie shows how data from two different instruments on the Cassini spacecraft can be combined to give an integrated view of Titan's surface.
The first frame -- a mosaic of near-infrared images from Cassini's Imaging Science Subsystem -- shows a 1,150-by 900-kilometer (715-by 560-mile) region near Titan's equator. North is up. At the bottom right is the edge of the large bright feature named Xanadu, which was first seen in NASA Hubble Space Telescope images in 1994. At the left is a smaller bright area named Shikoku Facula. The dark plains in between, called Shangri-La, are punctuated by numerous smaller bright features. This mosaic (PIA07754) was made from images acquired during Titan flyby in October 2005.The second movie frame shows the full extent of a radar image acquired with the Synthetic Aperture Radar during a flyby of Titan on April 30, 2006. Some bright and dark areas of the radar image correlate to the visible-light camera view, such as the bright 90-kilometer (60-mile) diameter ring feature to the right of center named Guabonito, but others do not. The radar images reveal that many of the large dark areas appear to be covered in dark streaks, which are also seen elsewhere on Titan. The streaks seem to be dunes of some kind of granular material (see PIA03567).
Some particularly interesting areas include a dark spot at the northeastern end of Shikoku, which is not obvious in the Imaging Science Subsystem data. What appear to be channels across Shikoku are seen in the Imaging Science Subsystem data as very dark, and are perhaps filled with the same dark material that makes the dunes. Within Shangri-la, many of the small spots that look bright to the Imaging Science Subsystem are very prominent as bright spots in the radar image, suggesting they may be rugged hills poking up above the dark plains.
In the third frame, two segments of the radar image are highlighted, which have been more strongly enhanced (see PIA08425 and PIA08426 for these two images). Guabonito and Shikoku Facula are labeled.
There are artifacts present in the view once the radar image fades in -- these are due to the asymmetrical shape of the overlaid radar image.
Multiple sets of data are needed to understand a complex world like Titan. As the Cassini mission continues to fly by Titan and observe different regions of its surface, there will be more and more areas where comparative analyses can be done.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Like an ancient mariner charting the coastline of an unexplored wilderness, Cassini's repeated encounters with Titan are turning a mysterious world into a more familiar place.
During a Titan flyby on Oct. 28, 2005, the spacecraft's narrow-angle camera acquired multiple images that were combined to create the mosaic presented here. A labeled version of the mosaic, showing provisional names applied to Titan's features, is also available (see PIA07752).
The mosaic is a high resolution close-up of two contrasting regions: dark Shangri-La and bright Xanadu. This view has a resolution of 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel and is centered at 2.5 degrees north latitude, 145 degrees west longitude, near the feature called Santorini Facula. The mosaic is composed of 10 images obtained on Oct. 28, 2005, each processed to enhance surface detail. It is an orthographic projection, rotated so that north on Titan is up.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This view of Titan taken on Feb. 25, 2007, reveals a giant lake-like feature in Titan's North Polar Region. It is approximately 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) long and has a surface area slightly smaller than that of Earth's largest lake, the Caspian Sea.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This map of Titan's surface illustrates the regions that will be imaged by Cassini during the spacecraft's close flyby of Titan on Sept. 7, 2005. At closest approach, the spacecraft is expected to pass approximately 1,075 kilometers (670 miles) above the moon's surface. This is Cassini's eighth flyby of Titan out of 45 flybys planned in the four-year tour.
The colored lines delineate the regions that will be imaged at differing resolutions.
Zooming-in closer to Titan than during its previous pass two weeks earlier, Cassini camera coverage again focuses on the region known informally as "the H." Some of the narrow-angle camera images Cassini takes during this close flyby will be composited into high-resolution mosaics, similar to PIA06222.
This encounter also should provide an excellent view of Bazaruto Facula and its central 80-kilometer-wide (50-mile) crater, seen in PIA06234.
The map shows only brightness variations on Titan's surface (the illumination is such that there are no shadows and no shading due to topographic variations). Previous observations indicate that due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few to five times larger than the actual pixel scale labeled on the map.
The images for this global map were obtained using a narrow band filter centered at 938 nanometers - a near-infrared wavelength (invisible to the human eye) at which light can penetrate Titan's atmosphere to reach the surface and return through the atmosphere to be detected by the camera. The images have been processed to enhance surface details.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
Voir l'image PIA07728: Cassini's Sept. 7, 2005, Titan Flyby sur le site de la NASA.
Click on the image for the animation
This is an artist's interpretation of the area surrounding the Huygens landing site, based on images and data returned Jan. 14, 2005.
On this day, the European Space Agency's Huygens probe reached the upper layer of Titan's atmosphere and landed on the surface after a parachute descent of 2 hours and 28 minutes.
The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe: the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Cassini's finely tuned vision reveals seasonal differences in the global haze that envelopes Titan in this narrow angle camera image taken on Oct. 24, 2004. The picture was taken through a filter sensitive to strong absorption by methane gas (wavelengths centered at 889 nanometers). Here, the northern hemisphere of Titan is notably brighter than the southern hemisphere, because there is more haze in the north. The presence of haze in the northern hemisphere was also observed in images returned by NASA's Voyager spacecraft in 1981. The haze distribution was reversed, north to south, in observations taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope from 1994 to 2000.
The image was taken from a distance of 1.08 million kilometers (675,000 miles) from Titan. The image scale is 6.52 kilometers (4.05 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
The geologic diversity of Titan's surface is well illustrated by this synthetic aperture radar image, obtained on Oct. 28, 2005, during the Cassini spacecraft's ninth Titan fly-by and fourth radar pass.
The bottom left and top right parts of the image show a series of parallel features resembling those discovered during the second radar pass. Called "cat scratches," these may be dunes of water ice or hydrocarbon particles. The brighter area on the bottom right is thought to be rougher and possibly higher in elevation than the darker areas. Above the center of the image are dark, narrow winding channels carved by, and possibly still containing, liquids.
This image is about 300 kilometers (186 miles) by 250 kilometers (155 miles). It is located 10 degrees south latitude and 292 degrees west longitude.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
This natural color image shows Titan's upper atmosphere -- an active place where methane molecules are being broken apart by solar ultraviolet light and the byproducts combine to form compounds like ethane and acetylene. The haze preferentially scatters blue and ultraviolet wavelengths of light, making its complex layered structure more easily visible at the shorter wavelengths used in this image.
A movie sequence of images, taken around the same time as this color view, shows movement of the haze layers over the course of a few hours (see PIA06223).
Lower down in the atmosphere, the haze turns into a globe-enshrouding smog of complex organic molecules. This thick, orange-colored haze absorbs visible sunlight, allowing only perhaps 10 percent of the light to reach the surface. The thick haze is also inefficient at holding in and then re-radiating infrared (thermal) energy back down to the surface. Thus, despite the fact that Titan has a thicker atmosphere than Earth, the thick global haze causes the greenhouse effect there to be somewhat weaker than it is on Earth.
Images taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained at a distance of approximately 9,500 kilometers (5,900 miles) from Titan on March 31, 2005. The image scale is approximately 400 meters (1,300 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
This image from Cassini's radar instrument shows an impact crater with a diameter of 30 kilometers (19 miles) on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.
Cassini data have only revealed three definite impact craters on Titan so far, so each new discovery adds significantly to our body of knowledge. Impact craters are particularly important, as their shapes give scientists insight into the structure of the crust beneath Titan's surface. The difference in overall appearance between this crater, which has a central peak, and those without, such as Sinlap, (see PIA07368), indicates variations in the conditions of impact, thickness of the crust, or properties of the meteorite that made the crater. The dark floor indicates smooth or highly absorbing materials.
This image was acquired by the Cassini radar instrument in synthetic aperture mode during a Sept. 7, 2006, flyby of Titan. The image is centered at 70 degrees west longitude, 10 degrees north latitude, and measures about 150 kilometers high by 190 kilometers wide (93 by 118 miles). The smallest details in this image are about 500 meters (about 550 yards) across.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Annotated Views of Titan from Different Altitudes
This poster shows a set of images acquired by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe descent imager/spectral radiometer, in the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), at five different altitudes above Titan's surface. The images were taken on Jan. 14, 2005.
The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The descent imager/spectral radiometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Annotated View of Mercator Projection of
Huygens's View at Different Altitudes
This poster shows a flattened (Mercator) projection of the view from the descent imager/spectral radiometer on the European Space Agency's Huygens probe at four different altitudes. The images were taken on Jan. 14, 2005.
The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The descent imager/spectral radiometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
Cassini peers around the hazy limb of Titan to spy the sunlit south pole of Saturn in the distance beyond.
The thick, smog-like atmosphere of frigid Titan is a major source of interest for the Cassini mission. The moon is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural-color view. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 26, 2005, at a distance of approximately 26,000 kilometers (16,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 1 kilometer (4,643 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Using its radar system, the Cassini spacecraft has imaged new lakes on Titan.
The large dark patch seen on this image, at high latitudes surrounding Titan's north pole, is most likely a hydrocarbon lake. Several dark channels can be seen; the longest one at the left meanders over almost 100 kilometers (62 miles), and appears to drain into the lake. Some dark channels are remarkably straight, suggesting possible faulting in the subsurface. The bright landforms jutting into the lake indicate that old, eroded landforms may have flooded. For a different radar view from the same flyby see PIA01943.
This radar image was acquired by the Cassini radar instrument in synthetic aperture mode on Oct. 9, 2006. The image is centered near 73 degrees north latitude, 343 degrees west longitude, and measures about 300 kilometers by 140 kilometers (190 miles by 90 miles). Smallest details in this image are about 500 meters (1,640 feet) across.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
The Cassini spacecraft snapped this image of the European Space Agency's Huygens probe about 12 hours after its release from the orbiter. The probe successfully detached from Cassini on Dec. 24, 2004, and is on course for its January 14 encounter with Titan.
The Huygens probe will remain dormant until the onboard timer wakes it up just before the probe reaches Titan's upper atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005. Then it will begin a dramatic plunge through Titan's murky atmosphere, tasting its chemical makeup and composition as it descends to touch down on its surface. The data gathered during this 2-1/2 hour descent will be transmitted from the probe to the Cassini orbiter. Afterward, Cassini will point its antenna to Earth and relay the data through NASA's Deep Space Network to JPL and on to the European Space Agency's Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, which serves as the operations center for the Huygens probe mission. From this control center, ESA engineers will be tracking the probe and scientists will be standing by to process the data from the probe's six instruments.
This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera at a distance of 18 kilometers (11 miles) from the probe on Dec. 25, 2004. The image has been magnified and contrast enhanced to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini.
High-resolution images taken during Cassini's close encounter with Titan on April 16, 2005, provide still more examples of the complicated relationships between the dark and bright materials on Titan's surface.
During the two most recent flybys of Titan, on March 31 and April 16, Cassini captured a number of images of the hemisphere of Titan that faces Saturn. The image at the left is taken from a mosaic of images obtained in March (see PIA06222) and shows the location of the view at the right.
The image at the right, taken during the most recent Titan flyby, shows a complex pattern of small, 40-kilometer-wide (25-mile), dark features within a brighter area. Similar to PIA06223, several narrow, dark and curvilinear features can be seen that may hint of dark channels within the bright material. Cassini's synthetic aperture radar experiment also observed this region in February, and the visual infrared mapping spectrometer experiment observed along with the imaging science subsystem cameras in April. Comparisons of these data sets will be important in understanding the geologic history of this complex region.
The view at the left consists of five images that have been added together and enhanced to bring out surface detail and to reduce noise, although some camera artifacts remain.
These images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers -- considered to be the imaging science subsystem's best spectral filter for observing the surface of Titan. This view was acquired from a distance of 36,000 kilometers (22,400 miles). The pixel scale of this image is 430 meters (0.3 miles) per pixel, although the actual resolution is likely to be several times larger.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
This view of Titan's surface highlights northwestern Shangri-la -- a large, equatorial dark region revealed by radar observations to be covered in longitudinal dune fields. The bright, circular feature right of center is a potential impact crater -- few of which have been spotted on Titan thus far.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated about 15 degrees to the right.
This view was created by combining multiple images taken using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 and 619 nanometers.
The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 13, 2007 at a distance of approximately 125,000 kilometers (77,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) per pixel. Due to scattering of light by Titan's hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few times larger than the actual pixel scale.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This image from the Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument on the Cassini spacecraft shows the radar-bright region Xanadu and two circular features interpreted to be degraded impact craters. In radar images, bright regions indicate a rough or scattering material, while a dark region might be smoother or more absorbing. The image was acquired during a flyby of Titan on April 30, 2006.
Near the top of the image is a 70-kilometer-wide (47-mile-wide) impact structure. In contrast to a similarly sized crater called Sinlap (see PIA07368), this crater shows a prominent central peak, indicating that the interaction between the impact and the crust was different in this region.
Near the bottom of the image is another circular feature with a dark central region that does not show evidence of a central peak. Numerous radar-bright channels cut across the image, indicating that liquids have flowed in this region.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Titan presented this face as the Cassini spacecraft approached for its second very close flyby of the mystery moon in December 2004. Prominent in the center of the image is Xanadu, a broad bright area on Titan first seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in the mid-1990s. The region seen a few hours later during this Cassini encounter at higher resolution has just started to rotate into view on the left when this image was taken. Regions on the right (east) in this image had not been seen clearly before.
Other interesting features in this image, first seen by Cassini, include a bright 560-kilometer wide (345 mile) semi-circle in the lower right of Xanadu which may be an impact structure, and a confirmed crater with multiple concentric rings (near the upper right). The inner, dark circular feature in this crater is 300 +/- 20 kilometers (186 +/- 12 miles) in diameter.
Below Xanadu, two bright, linear clouds can be seen at about 38 degrees south latitude; these clouds were seen to dissipate a few hours later. Surprisingly, no clouds were seen near the south pole, as had been seen during the October close encounter (see PIA06124) and during the July distant encounter (see PIA06110).
This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 10, 2004 at a distance of 1,746,000 kilometers (1,082,500 miles) and has a scale of 10.4 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel. A special filter in the near-infrared at 938 nanometers was used for this image. The image was processed to enhance surface features and sharpen boundaries. Some artifacts, like the false shadow around the bright streaked cloud, are a result of the processing.
[This caption was modified on March 16, 2005.]
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This mosaic of Titan's surface was made from 16 images. The individual images have been specially processed to remove effects of Titan's hazy atmosphere and to improve visibility of the surface near the terminator (the boundary between day and night).
During Cassini's first close flyby of Titan in October 2004, many clouds were seen near the south pole; in the December flyby many clouds were seen at mid-latitudes (see PIA06157). During this flyby, only a few small clouds near the south pole were noted.
Imaging coverage during this flyby included improved looks at territory to the north and west of Xanadu, the large bright white area.
The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light and were acquired at distances ranging from approximately 226,000 to 242,000 kilometers (140,000 to 150,000 miles) from Titan. Resolution in the images is about 1.3 kilometers (0.8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This mosaic from the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer camera on the European Space Agency's Huygens probe combines 17 image triplets, projected from an altitude of 800 meters (2,625 feet). The area covered is approximately 1,300 meters (4,265 feet) across (north at the top of the image). The smallest visible objects visible are less than five meters (16 feet) across, and the dark channels are 30 to 40 meters (98 to 131 feet) wide.
The images were then stitched together using one of several projection algorithms (in this case 'gnomonic') to produce a full mosaic. The images used to construct this mosaic were taken on Jan. 14, 2005.
The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer is one of two NASA-funded instruments on the probe.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Descent Imager/Spectral team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer visit http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/.
The existence of oceans or lakes of liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan was predicted more than 20 years ago. But with a dense haze preventing a closer look it has not been possible to confirm their presence. Until the Cassini flyby of July 22, 2006, that is.
Radar imaging data from the flyby, published this week in the journal Nature, provide convincing evidence for large bodies of liquid. This image, used on the journal's cover, gives a taste of what Cassini saw. Intensity in this colorized image is proportional to how much radar brightness is returned, or more specifically, the logarithm of the radar backscatter cross-section. The colors are not a representation of what the human eye would see.
The lakes, darker than the surrounding terrain, are emphasized here by tinting regions of low backscatter in blue. Radar-brighter regions are shown in tan. The strip of radar imagery is foreshortened to simulate an oblique view of the highest latitude region, seen from a point to its west.
This radar image was acquired by the Cassini radar instrument in synthetic aperture mode on July 22, 2006. The image is centered near 80 degrees north, 35 degrees west and is about 140 kilometers (84 miles) across. Smallest details in this image are about 500 meters (1,640 feet) across.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Saturn's planet-sized moon Titan displays a surprisingly flattened-looking north pole in this Cassini image. The cause of this flattening is not presently known. Titan's diameter is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles).
A hint of the bright, streak-like clouds seen intermittently in Cassini images of the south polar region is faintly visible at the bottom of the image.
This view was obtained in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Nov. 1, 2004, at a distance of approximately 2.9 million kilometers (1.8 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 99 degrees. The image scale is 17 kilometers (10.6 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This Cassini spacecraft view of Titan shows banding in the atmosphere of the moon's northern hemisphere.
Like the planet Venus, Titan's atmosphere rotates faster than its surface, a characteristic called "super rotation."
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up.
White specks seen on Titan are artifacts of the process used to enhance features in the moon's atmosphere. The image was taken in visible blue light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on May 28, 2008. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 185,000 kilometers (115,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 89 degrees. Image scale is 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10418: Banded Moon sur le site de la NASA.
This synthetic aperture radar image of Titan was taken on Oct. 28, 2005, as the Cassini spacecraft flew by at a distance of 1,350 kilometers (840 miles). This was the first pass dedicated to radar, and it was the fourth time Cassini's radar honed in on the smoggy moon.
The bright, curving features are high-standing ridges, poking up above the plains of Titan. Some of the ridges extend for over 100 kilometers (60 miles). They are likely to be tectonic in origin, formed by deformation of Titan's icy crust. The low-lying terrain between the ridges is covered in dark streaks, which could be dunes formed by wind. The streaks, spaced 1 to 2 kilometers apart (0.6 to 1 mile), curve between patches of the bright terrain, which probably act as topographic barriers.
This image is 400 kilometers (250 miles) across and 275 kilometers-wide (170 miles). It is located 8 degrees south latitude and 215 degrees west longitude.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
This radar image, obtained by Cassini's radar instrument during a near-polar flyby on Sept. 23, 2006, is the second scene that shows clear shorelines reminiscent of terrestrial lakes.
With Titan's colder temperatures and hydrocarbon-rich atmosphere, these lakes most likely contain a combination of methane and ethane (both hydrocarbons), not water. This high-latitude opportunity confirmed scientists' predictions that lakes would be present here, consistent with calculations that suggested that hydrocarbons would be stable as liquids at the colder, high latitudes. It also showed unusual complex terrain, the origin of which remains a mystery.
The image is illuminated by the radar from the top, and shows features as small as about 300 meters (980 feet). Starting at the left (63 degrees north latitude by 255 degrees west longitude), where the terrain appears bland and dark, the swath heads northeast into a more rugged, mottled terrain, probably containing dried lakes and canyons formed by the presence of liquid hydrocarbons.
The first lake, an irregular, almost-triangular shape about 16 kilometers (10 miles) across at the widest point, can be seen near the bottom of the image; it appears to be fed by two channels from the south. Several more lakes can be seen about one-third of the way into the swath, near the closest approach to the pole, (north of 75 degrees north latitude), including Titan's "kissing lakes" (see PIA08740), each 20 to 25 kilometers (12 to 16 miles) across. Two other lakes feature narrow or angular bays, including a broad peninsula that on Earth would be evidence that the surrounding terrain is higher and confines the liquid. Continuing on, about three-quarters of the way through the swath, the terrain becomes brighter and more rugged, again indicating possible dried lakes and canyon-like structures. A long 100-kilometer (60-mile) series of grooves appears, likely carved by liquids. Next is an area of bright terrain with an unusual directional texture, indicating possible dunes, but brighter and perhaps different in nature than those seen elsewhere. Finally, towards the end of the swath, where the image quality is poorest, the terrain becomes mottled and difficult to interpret.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
This image was taken during Cassini's very close approach to Titan on Dec. 13, 2004.
Bright streaks of cloud in Titan's southern hemisphere are visible. Linear clouds such as these have appeared intermittently in this region of Titan.
The image was obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera at a distance of approximately 178,600 kilometers (111,000 miles) from Titan, through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 918 nanometers. The Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle is 15 degrees. The image scale is about 10.5 kilometers (6.5 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Multiple upper stratospheric haze layers are evident in this ultraviolet view from Cassini looking toward Titan's south pole. The alternating bright and dark bands may be due to differing haze concentrations produced by what may be gravity wave motions (the atmospheric equivalent of ripples on a pond), or perhaps they are evidence of shadows cast by haze layers moving upward as waves pass by in the atmosphere. East-west waves suggestive of other wave motions are also visible in these layers.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Feb. 14, 2005, through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of polarized ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers. The image was acquired at a distance of approximately 151,000 kilometers (94,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 20 degrees. Resolution in the image is about 900 meters (3,000 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Click on the image for QuickTime Movie of
Titan Descent Data Movie with Bells and Whistles
This movie, built with data collected during the European Space Agency's Huygens probe on Jan. 14, 2005, shows the operation of the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer camera during its descent and after touchdown. The camera was funded by NASA.
The almost four-hour-long operation of the camera is shown in less than five minutes. That's 40 times the actual speed up to landing and 100 times the actual speed thereafter.
The first part of the movie shows how Titan looked to the camera as it acquired more and more images during the probe's descent. Each image has a small field of view, and dozens of images were made into mosaics of the whole scene.
The scientists analyzed Huygens' speed, direction of motion, rotation and swinging during the descent. The movie includes sidebar graphics that show:
(Lower left corner) Huygens' trajectory views from the south, a scale bar for comparison to the height of Mount Everest, colored arrows that point to the sun and to the Cassini orbiter. (Top left corner) A close-up view of the Huygens probe highlighting large and unexpected parachute movements, a scale bar for comparison to human height. (Lower right corner) A compass that shows the changing direction of view as Huygens rotates, along with the relative positions of the sun and Cassini. (Upper right corner) A clock that shows Universal Time for Jan. 14, 2005 (Universal Time is 7 hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Time). Above the clock, events are listed in mission time, which starts with the deployment of the first of the three parachutes.
Sounds from a left speaker trace Huygens' motion, with tones changing with rotational speed and the tilt of the parachute. There also are clicks that clock the rotational counter, as well as sounds for the probe's heat shield hitting Titan's atmosphere, parachute deployments, heat shield release, jettison of the camera cover and touchdown.
Sounds from a right speaker go with the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer activity. There's a continuous tone that represents the strength of Huygens' signal to Cassini. Then there are 13 different chimes - one for each of instrument's 13 different science parts - that keep time with flashing-white-dot exposure counters. During its descent, the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer took 3,500 exposures.
The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The descent imager/spectral radiometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
Three views of Titan’s Odd Spot
The recently discovered infrared-bright spot on Titan (see PIA07877) is the type of enigmatic feature that is best investigated by putting together as many different types of complementary information as possible. Cassini's varied array of scientific instruments is equal to the task. This montage shows the spot in infrared wavelengths from the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer on the left, from the imaging science subsystem in the center, and a combination of both data sets on the right.
When put together, the two different views show more than either does separately. The visual and infrared spectrometer team noted the bright region in the image on the left after Cassini's March 31, 2004, Titan encounter. The strange, bright feature to the southeast of Xanadu (see PIA06154) was flagged as unusual and informally dubbed "The Smile" by imaging team members in December 2004. Together the images show that The Smile (seen by the imaging cameras at 0.938 micron) bounds the infrared "Bright, Red Spot" toward the southeast. The bright region seen in the visible and infrared mapping spectrometer image extends several hundred kilometers to the north and west of The Smile, but does not cover the dark terrain located between this area and Xanadu farther to the northwest. The Smile feature also seems to extend farther west at the south end than the Bright, Red Spot.
It seems clear that both instruments are detecting the same basic feature on Titan's surface. This bright patch may be due to an impact event, landslide, cryovolcanism, or atmospheric processes. Its distinct color and brightness suggest that it may have formed relatively recently.
The false-color image on the left was created using images taken at 1.7 microns (represented by blue), 2.0 microns (green), and 5.0 microns (red). The images that comprise this view were taken by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer instrument on the April 16, 2005, Titan flyby. Several views were stitched together to make a mosaic. The result was then reprojected to simulate the view from the imaging camera so that the two could be directly compared.
The center image was taken by the narrow-angle camera on December 10, 2004, using a spectral filter centered at 0.938 microns (938 nanometers). The image was taken at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Titan and has a pixel scale of 9 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel (see PIA06154) for original image). The image is centered on 8 degrees south latitude, 112 degrees west longitude. This image has been contrast enhanced and sharpened to improve surface feature visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the VIMS page at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu and the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
This medium-resolution view shows some of the surface streaks of Titan's equatorial terrain. The streaks are oriented roughly east to west; however, some streaks curve to the north and others curve to the south, perhaps due to the topography of this region. North is a few degrees to the right of vertical. The scale is .85 kilometers (.53 miles) per pixel. This image was taken on Oct. 26, 2004, by Cassini's imaging science subsystem using near-infrared filters.
For the latest news about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. For more information about the mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This false-color composite was created with images taken during the Cassini spacecraft's closest flyby of Titan on April 16, 2005.
It was created by combining two infrared images (taken at 938 and 889 nanometers) with a visible light image (taken at 420 nanometers). Green represents areas where Cassini is able to see down to the surface. Red represents areas high in Titan's stratosphere where atmospheric methane is absorbing sunlight. Blue along the moon's outer edge represents visible violet wavelengths at which the upper atmosphere and detached hazes are better seen.
A similar false-color image showing the opposite hemisphere of Titan was created from images taken during Cassini's first close flyby of the smoggy moon in October 2004 (see PIA06139). At that time, clouds could be seen near Titan's south pole, but in these more recent observations no clouds are seen.
North on Titan is up and tilted 30 degrees to the right.
The images used to create this composite were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera on April 16, 2005, at distances ranging from approximately 173,000 to 168,200 kilometers (107,500 to 104,500 miles) from Titan and from a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 56 degrees. Resolution in the images approximately 10 kilometers per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Piercing the ubiquitous layer of smog enshrouding Titan, these images from the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer reveals an exotic surface covered with a variety of materials in the southern hemisphere.
Using near-infrared colors -- some three times deeper in the red visible to the human eye -- these images reveal the surface with unusual clarity. The color image shows a false-color combination of the three previous images. The yellow areas correspond to the hydrocarbon-rich regions, while the green areas are the icier regions. Here, the methane cloud appears white, as it is bright in all three colors.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/.
Looking back toward the sun brings out the thin haze than hovers 500 kilometers (310 miles) above Saturn's moon Titan.
The haze is composed of small particles whose diameter is comparable to the wavelength of light, which is ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers. Particles of this scale scatter sunlight most effectively in the direction opposite to the direction of sunlight. Scientists are still trying to understand what processes produce this thin, high-altitude haze layer.
North on Titan is up and tilted 10 degrees to the right. Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 24, 2005, at a distance of approximately 917,000 kilometers (570,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 145 degrees. Image scale is 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Dazzling Titan glows with a 360-degree sunset as light scatters through its very extended atmosphere. Some structure is visible in the hazes of the northern polar hood.
To the left is Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across), far off on the opposite side of the ringplane. The rings show their unlit side to Cassini, as the spacecraft viewed them from slightly above the ringplane.
A world with strikingly Earth-like physical processes, frigid Titan is Saturn's largest natural satellite, at 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across. Titan's image is saturated at the 5 o'clock position.
The view was acquired in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 2, 2006 at a distance of approximately 2.3 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 163 degrees. Cassini was 3.7 million kilometers (2.3 million miles) from Janus. Image scale is 14 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel on Titan and 22 kilometers (14 miles) on Janus.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
The Cassini spacecraft peers closely at the layers of organic haze in Titan's upper atmosphere during a recent flyby.
Planet-sized Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 20, 2007 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 190,000 kilometers (118,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 133 degrees.Image scale is 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09823: Detached Haze sur le site de la NASA.
The murky orange disk of Saturn's moon Titan glides past -- a silent, floating sphere transiting Saturn.
Titan's photochemical smog completely obscures the surface in such natural color views. Its high-altitude hazes are visible against the disk of Saturn as they attenuate the light reflected by the planet.
Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3200 miles) across. The view was acquired from less than a degree above Saturn's ringplane.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 1, 2007, at a distance of approximately 2.4 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from Titan. Image scale is 15 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
These images show two views of Titan's planet-wide stratospheric haze just before (left) and after (right) Cassini's first close encounter with the shrouded moon. The image on the left was taken on Oct. 25, 2004, through an ultraviolet filter, which is sensitive to scattering of sunlight by small haze particles. It shows the high-altitude haze at the north pole (top) illuminated above a surface blanketed in darkness during this winter season. Numerous striations are visible in the haze, indicating either waves passing through the layer or the presence of multiple layers. The pixel scale of this image is 2.8 kilometers (1.7 miles).
The image on the right was taken on Oct. 26, 2004, and shows Titan's night-side backlit by the Sun after Cassini's closest approach to the moon. The haze layer ringing the planet is illuminated because the small particles scatter significant sunlight in the forward direction. Variations in haze concentration and thickness around the globe are also evident and seem to be symmetric around the north pole (upper left). The pixel scale of this image is 6.6 kilometers (4.1 miles).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For the latest news about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. For more information about the mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Swathed in its thick blanket of atmosphere, frigid Titan approaches the brilliant limb of Saturn.
This view was obtained just minutes after the wide-angle view, PIA09856.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 29, 2008 at a distance of approximately 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Titan. Image scale is 14 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09858: Titan Approaches Saturn sur le site de la NASA.
This artist concept shows a mirror-smooth lake on the surface of the smoggy moon Titan.
Cassini scientists have concluded that at least one of the large lakes observed on Saturn's moon Titan contains liquid hydrocarbons, and have positively identified ethane. This result makes Titan the only place in our solar system beyond Earth known to have liquid on its surface.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/.
Voir l'image PIA11001: Titan's Ethane Lake sur le site de la NASA.
This image shows Titan in ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. It was taken by Cassini's imaging science subsystem on Oct. 26, 2004, and is constructed from four images acquired through different color filters. Red and green colors represent infrared wavelengths and show areas where atmospheric methane absorbs light. These colors reveal a brighter (redder) northern hemisphere. Blue represents ultraviolet wavelengths and shows the high atmosphere and detached hazes.
Titan has a gigantic atmosphere, extending hundreds of kilometers above the surface. The sharp variations in brightness on Titan's surface (and clouds near the south pole) are apparent at infrared wavelengths. The image scale of this picture is 6.4 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
On the final flyby of Cassini's original four-year tour, its radar mapper captured these unusual channels on Titan at the edge of Xanadu, the widest seen in this area (For a radar image of Xanadu see PIA08428). These might be active rivers carrying methane or debris, or they might be dry riverbeds similar to earthly arroyos.
Past Cassini radar images have revealed different types of channels on Titan's surface (see PIA03565 and PIA07366). They vary from bright to dark in radar (rough to smooth), and from fan-shaped to braided to meandering. Some drain into lakes, others disappear. Some of these channels may be several hundred meters, or feet, deep.
This image, taken from the flyby on May 28, 2008, shows the border of Xanadu as the bright-dark boundary running from the upper left to lower right. Southward from that boundary is an unusual set of channels. While these are brighter (more roughly textured) than the surrounding terrain, some are only slightly brighter, and some are as wide as 5 kilometers (about 3 miles)—about the size of the River Thames at its mouth east of London. They appear to flow out of the rough region of Xanadu. Careful inspection reveals smaller tributaries that wind through the brighter and apparently rougher terrain to the north. A close-up of one of the widest channels is shown at the lower left.
Scientists think that many of the channels on Titan are carved by methane deposited on the surface from strong but infrequent rainstorms. A bright channel may be dry, with the rough riverbed of icy particles (like those seen at the Huygens landing site) producing the radar brightness. The darker channels in this image resemble the dry lakes seen in the north polar area of Titan, so they may be dry as well, with their smoother (radar-dark) surfaces caused by finer-grained sediment deposits on the channel floors.
This image shows an area located at 15 degrees south latitude and 121 degrees west longitude. It is about 450 kilometers (280 miles) across, and has approximately 1 kilometer (0.62-mile) resolution. North is up.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/.
Voir l'image PIA10956: Xanadu's Channels sur le site de la NASA.
This image was returned yesterday, January 14, 2005, by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during its successful descent to land on Titan. This is the colored view, following processing to add reflection spectra data, and gives a better indication of the actual color of the surface.
Initially thought to be rocks or ice blocks, they are more pebble-sized. The two rock-like objects just below the middle of the image are about 15 centimeters (about 6 inches) (left) and 4 centimeters (about 1.5 inches) (center) across respectively, at a distance of about 85 centimeters (about 33 inches) from Huygens. The surface is darker than originally expected, consisting of a mixture of water and hydrocarbon ice. There is also evidence of erosion at the base of these objects, indicating possible fluvial activity.
The image was taken with the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer, one of two NASA instruments on the probe.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Descent Imager/Spectral team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Cassini delivers this stunning vista showing small, battered Epimetheus and smog-enshrouded Titan, with Saturn's A and F rings stretching across the scene.
The color information in the colorized view is completely artificial: it is derived from red, green and blue images taken at nearly the same time and phase angle as the clear filter image. This color information was overlaid onto the previously released clear filter view (see PIA07786) in order to approximate the scene as it might appear to human eyes.
The prominent dark region visible in the A ring is the Encke gap (325 kilometers, or 200 miles wide), in which the moon Pan (26 kilometers, or 16 miles across) and several narrow ringlets reside. Moon-driven features which score the A ring can easily be seen to the left and right of the Encke gap.
A couple of bright clumps can be seen in the F ring.
Epimetheus is 116 kilometers (72 miles) across and giant Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
The view was acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 28, 2006, at a distance of approximately 667,000 kilometers (415,000 miles) from Epimetheus and 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Titan. The image captures the illuminated side of the rings. The image scale is 4 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel on Epimetheus and 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel on Titan.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
The European Space Agency's Huygens probe appears shining as it coasts away from Cassini in this close-up of an image taken on Dec. 26, 2004, just two days after it successfully detached from the Cassini spacecraft.
In figure 1, the image on the left shows the relative size of the probe. The bright spots in both images are probably due to light reflecting off the blanketing material that covers the probe. Although only a few pixels across, this image is helping navigators reconstruct the probe's trajectory and pinpoint its position relative to Cassini. This information so far shows that the probe and Cassini are right on the mark and well within the predicted trajectory accuracy. This information is important to help establish the required geometry between the probe and the orbiter for radio communications during the probe descent on January 14.
The Huygens probe, built and managed by ESA, will remain dormant until the onboard timer wakes it up just before the probe reaches Titan's upper atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005. Then it will begin a dramatic plunge through Titan's murky atmosphere, tasting its chemical makeup and composition as it descends to touch down on its surface. The data gathered during this 2-1/2 hour descent will be transmitted from the probe to the Cassini orbiter. Afterward, Cassini will point its antenna to Earth and relay the data through NASA's Deep Space Network to JPL and on to the European Space Agency's Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, which serves as the operations center for the Huygens probe mission. From this control center, ESA engineers will be tracking the probe and scientists will be standing by to process the data from the probe's six instruments.
This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera at a distance of 52 kilometers (32 miles) from the probe on Dec. 26, 2004. The image has been magnified and contrast enhanced to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini.
Although the Huygens probe has now pierced the murky skies of Titan and landed on its surface, much of the moon remains for the Cassini spacecraft to explore. Titan continues to present exciting puzzles.
This view of Titan uncovers new territory not previously seen at this resolution by Cassini's cameras. The view is a composite of four nearly identical wide-angle camera images, all taken using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 939 nanometers. The individual images have been combined and contrast-enhanced in such a way as to sharpen surface features and enhance overall brightness variations.
Some of the territory in this view was covered by observations made by the Cassini synthetic aperture radar in October 2004 and February 2005. At large scales, there are similarities between the views taken by the imaging science subsystem cameras and the radar results, but there also are differences.
For example, the center of the floor of the approximately 80-kilometer-wide (50-mile) crater identified by the radar team in February (near the center in this image, see PIA07368 for the radar image) is relatively bright at 2.2 centimeters, the wavelength of the radar experiment, but dark in the near-infrared wavelengths used here by Cassini's optical cameras. This brightness difference is also apparent for some of the surrounding material and could indicate differences in surface composition or roughness.
Such comparisons, as well as information from observations acquired by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer at the same time as the optical camera observations, are important in trying to understand the nature of Titan's surface materials.
The images for this composite view were taken with the Cassini spacecraft on March 31, 2005, at distances ranging from approximately 146,000 to 130,000 kilometers (91,000 to 81,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of about 57 degrees. The image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel. Previous observations indicate that, due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few times larger than the actual pixel scale.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
The northern hemisphere of Titan (5,150 kilometers, 3,200 miles across) presently appears darker than the south, a feature presumed to be a seasonal effect.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 29, 2008 at a distance of approximately 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Titan and 1 million kilometers (630,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 135 kilometers (84 miles) per pixel on Titan and 61 kilometers (38 miles) per pixel on Saturn.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09856: Titan Slips Away sur le site de la NASA.
These three views of Titan from the Cassini spacecraft illustrate how different the same place can look in different wavelengths of light. Cassini's cameras have numerous filters that reveal features above and beneath the shroud of Titan's atmosphere.
The first image, a natural color composite, is a combination of images taken through three filters that are sensitive to red, green and violet light. It shows approximately what Titan would look like to the human eye: a hazy orange globe surrounded by a tenuous, bluish haze. The orange color is due to the hydrocarbon particles which make up Titan's atmospheric haze. This obscuring haze was particularly frustrating for planetary scientists following the NASA Voyager mission encounters in 1980-81. Fortunately, Cassini is able to pierce Titan's veil at infrared wavelengths. A single view of this composite is also available (see PIA06230).
The second, monochrome view shows what Titan looks like at 938 nanometers, a near-infrared wavelength that allows Cassini to see through the hazy atmosphere and down to the surface. The view was created by combining three separate images taken with this filter, in order to improve the visibility of surface features. The variations in brightness on the surface are real differences in the reflectivity of the materials on Titan. A single view of this image is also available (see PIA06228).
The third view, which is a false-color composite, was created by combining two infrared images (taken at 938 and 889 nanometers) with a visible light image (taken at 420 nanometers). Green represents areas where Cassini is able to see down to the surface. Red represents areas high in Titan's stratosphere where atmospheric methane is absorbing sunlight. Blue along the moon's outer edge represents visible violet wavelengths at which the upper atmosphere and detached hazes are better seen. A single view of this composite is also available (see PIA06229).
A similar false-color image showing the opposite hemisphere of Titan was created from images taken during Cassini's first close flyby of the smoggy moon in October 2004 (see PIA06139). At that time, clouds could be seen near Titan's south pole, but in these more recent observations no clouds are seen.
North on Titan is up and tilted 30 degrees to the right.
All of these images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera on April 16, 2005, at distances ranging from approximately 173,000 to 168,200 kilometers (107,500 to 104,500 miles) from Titan and from a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 56 degrees. Resolution in the images approximately 10 kilometers per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
A hazy orb hangs in space, swathed in its dense cocoon of frigid atmosphere. Titan's global, detached, high-altitude haze layer is visible here. Also visible is Titan's enigmatic polar hood, which hangs over the polar regions of the moon's northern hemisphere. Scientists will track changes in this feature as winter in Titan's northern hemisphere advances to spring.
Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
The image was taken in visible blue light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 9, 2007. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 4.5 million kilometers (2.8 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 28 degrees. Image scale is 27 kilometers (17 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This picture is a composite of 30 images from ESA's Huygens probe. They were taken from an altitude varying from 13 kilometers down to 8 kilometers when the probe was descending towards its landing site.
The images have a resolution of about 20 meters per pixel and cover an area extending out to 30 kilometers.
This image of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, obtained by Cassini's radar instrument during a near-polar flyby on Feb. 22, 2007, features dunes and lakes, one of which is larger than any lake on Earth and could be legitimately called a sea. First discovered by Cassini's radar in July 2006 (see PIA08630), Titan's lakes are thought to consist of liquid methane and ethane.
The image runs from southern latitudes, starting at 32 degrees south, 55 degrees west, where we see featureless terrain with bright streaks, heading north and slightly east, through dune fields interspersed with exposed bright mounds. In places, the dunes wrap around the bright mounds, which suggests the mounds are raised (see PIA09181). In one case, the dunes wrap around an unusual rose-shaped structure, approximately 70 kilometers (40 miles) across. Near the spacecraft's closest approach (33 degrees north, 28 degrees west), where the swath is at its narrowest, the terrain is dark and mottled, with occasional bright outcrops and fine dunes. As we continue to head north, we see the first signs of the action of liquids--fine channels and canyon-like structures. Later, depressions can be seen. These are similar to those seen in the lake region and are interpreted as volcanic calderas or drained lakes. As the swath continues, these become more plentiful, and some are partly filled with dark material thought to be liquid hydrocarbons, hence lakes. In places, the lakes reside in what appear to be nested, near-circular depressions, reminiscent of nested calderas.
The final section of the swath, which is closest to the pole, contains by far the largest lakes observed by Cassini's radar to date. Part of the first of these was seen during a previous flyby (see PIA01942), and is fed by a long river -- over 200 kilometers (120 miles) in length, and hundreds of meters to over 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) in width - running through what appears to be a flood plain. The lake's bright, jutting shoreline indicates that old, eroded landforms may have been flooded. The end of the next lake was also observed before (see PIA01943), appearing to be, in both form and scale, similar to Lake Powell, a flooded drainage system in Utah and Arizona. We can now see that this lake on Titan connects via a relatively narrow channel to a much larger (at least 45,000 square kilometers or 17,000 square miles) lake, containing a large (approximately 12,000 square kilometers or 4,600 square miles) island or peninsula (see PIA09180). The last part of the image passes close to the pole (86 degrees north, 290 degrees east), before heading east and slightly south. At the end of the swath, we see the largest lake observed yet -- at least 100,000 square kilometers (39,000 square miles), which is greater in extent than one of the largest lakes on Earth, Lake Superior (82,000 square kilometers or 32,000 square miles), and covers a greater fraction of Titan than the largest terrestrial inland sea, the Black Sea. The Black Sea covers 0.085 percent of the surface of the Earth; this newly observed body on Titan covers at least 0.12 percent of the surface of Titan. Because of its size, scientists are calling this a sea.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Images from the European Space Agency's Huygens probe descent imager/spectral radiometer side-looking imager and from the medium resolution imager, acquired after landing, were merged to produce this image.
The horizon's position implies a pitch of the imager/spectral radiometer, nose-upward, by 1 to 2 degrees with no measurable roll. "Stones" in the foreground are 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) in size, presumably made of water ice, and these lie on a darker, finer-grained substrate. A region with a relatively low number of rocks lies between clusters of rocks in the foreground and the background and matches the general orientation of channel-like features in the panorama of PIA06439). The scene evokes the possibility of a dry lakebed.
The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Bright clouds circumscribe Titan's north polar region—a frigid land of methane seas.
The clouds seen in this image and other recent Cassini spacecraft views are at higher latitudes than similar streak-like clouds observed in the southern hemisphere (see PIA08966). Scientists are working to understand why such clouds appear preferentially at certain latitudes on Saturn's largest moon.
While the streaks that grace Titan's southern hemisphere are often seen at 40 degrees south latitude, similar to Wellington, New Zealand, the streaks in the northern hemisphere are farther from the equator, near 56 degrees north latitude, which is similar to Glasgow, Scotland.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated 16 degrees to the right.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 30, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.2 million kilometers (776,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 71 degrees. Image scale is 7 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10511: Titan's Northern Streaks sur le site de la NASA.
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and Mimas, closer but much smaller on the right, are seen together in this view from Cassini. Titan's gravity is weaker than Earth's, so the moon's atmosphere is quite extended --- a quality hinted at in this view.
Part of Mimas' dark side is illuminated by reflected light from nearby Saturn.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 3, 2005, at a distance of approximately 3.6 million kilometers (2.2 million miles) from Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) and 2.5 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Mimas (397 kilometers, or 247 miles across). Both moons are seen at a Sun-moon-spacecraft angle, or phase angle, of 110 degrees. The image scale is 22 kilometers (14 miles) per pixel on Titan and 15 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel on Mimas.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
The Cassini spacecraft, using its radar system, has discovered very strong evidence for hydrocarbon lakes on Titan. Dark patches, which resemble terrestrial lakes, seem to be sprinkled all over the high latitudes surrounding Titan's north pole.
Scientists have speculated that liquid methane or ethane might form lakes on Titan, particularly near the somewhat colder polar regions. In the images, a variety of dark patches, some with channels leading in or out of them, appear. The channels have a shape that strongly implies they were carved by liquid. Some of the dark patches and connecting channels are completely black, that is, they reflect back essentially no radar signal, and hence must be extremely smooth. In some cases rims can be seen around the dark patches, suggesting deposits that might form as liquid evaporates. The abundant methane in Titan's atmosphere is stable as a liquid under Titan conditions, as is its abundant chemical product, ethane, but liquid water is not. For all these reasons, scientists interpret the dark areas as lakes of liquid methane or ethane, making Titan the only body in the solar system besides Earth known to possess lakes. Because such lakes may wax and wane over time, and winds may alter the roughness of their surfaces, repeat coverage of these areas should test whether these are indeed bodies of liquid.
These two radar images were acquired by the Cassini radar instrument in synthetic aperture mode on July 21, 2006. The top image centered near 80 degrees north, 92 degrees west measures about 420 kilometers by 150 kilometers (260 miles by 93 miles). The lower image centered near 78 degrees north, 18 degrees west measures about 475 kilometers by 150 kilometers (295 miles by 93 miles). Smallest details in this image are about 500 meters (1,640 feet) across.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
This processed image from Cassini's Aug. 22, 2005, flyby of Titan reveals mid-latitudes on the moon's Saturn-facing side. This region has been imaged previously by Cassini, although the recent approach has improved the moderate-resolution coverage of the area.
Provisional names recently have been applied to a number of features on Titan. Features within the region seen here -- long known informally as the H -- now have names like Tsegihi, Aztlan and Quivira.
The bright 215-kilometer-wide (134-mile) feature provisionally named "Bazaruto Facula" is clearly visible right of center, with its dark, unnamed 80-kilometer-wide (50-mile) crater at its center.
This view was acquired with the wide-angle camera at a distance of approximately 159,000 kilometers (99,000 miles) from Titan using a spectral filter centered on infrared wavelengths at 939 nanometers. The image scale is 9 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel. Previous observations indicate that, due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few times larger than the actual pixel scale.
For other views of this terrain on Titan, see PIA06220, PIA06222 and PIA06227.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
Titan's featureless atmosphere as seen in visible light glares back at the viewer, challenging Cassini and its piggybacked Huygens probe to expose the moon's many secrets. The Huygens probe, built by the European Space Agency, along with Cassini's powerful cameras, will soon penetrate the thick atmospheric haze which enshrouds this moon, which is about the size of Mercury.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on May 23, 2004, from a distance of 21.6 million kilometers (13.4 million miles) from Titan. The image scale is 129 kilometers (80 miles) per pixel. The image was magnified to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Through the obscuring haze come glimpses of Titan's dune seas.
The dark, equatorial region known as Shangri-la is visible here. Cassini radar images show that Shangri-la and other dark regions around the moon's middle are filled with vast stretches of parallel dunes (see PIA07785). These regions appear to be lowland areas surrounded by brighter, higher terrain.Lit terrain seen here is on the anti-Saturn side of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across). North is up and rotated 21 degrees to the right.The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 19, 2007 using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light centered at 746 and 938 nanometers.The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (851,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 80 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09774: Dark Lowlands sur le site de la NASA.
This movie shows a quick succession of multiple products of Titan's surface from the Cassini orbiter and the European Space Agency's Huygens probe. It shows Cassini imaging science sub-system images, radar images and visual and infrared mapping spectrometer images of the Huygens probe landing area. The rest of the movie consists of mosaics from the descent imager/spectral radiometer. The camera system on the Huygens probe mimics the descent profile of the probe starting at about 144 kilometers (89 miles), looking eastward throughout. It displays the Titan surface in true color. The sequence ends with a true-color surface image. The radar images of the Huygens landing site were taken by the Cassini orbiter radar instrument during the Titan flyby on Oct. 28, 2005.
The probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
This image of Titan was acquired on April 30, 2006, by Cassini's radar instrument in synthetic-aperture mode over the continent-sized region called Xanadu.
Xanadu is one of the brightest areas on Titan, measuring about 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) east to west and 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) north to south. The radar coverage shown ranges from 220 to 490 kilometers (140 to 300 miles) from top to bottom, and is about 4,850 kilometers (3,013 miles) wide. Smallest details in this image are about 400 meters (1,310 feet) across.
On Xanadu, most of the geologic forces that modify Earth's surface can be found. Channels are seen crossing through plains and meandering through bright, hilly country. Chains of taller mountains appear in Xanadu's interior. Dunes traverse darker areas to the west of Xanadu itself. Circular features might have been formed by the impact of an asteroid or by cryovolcanism. More channels carve through the eastern (right) margin, ending on a dark plain where the dunes abundant elsewhere seem absent.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
