Galerie de photos de Titan, satellite de la planète Saturne

<h1>PIA06086: Mapping Titan's Surface</h1><div class="PIA06086" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>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 <a href="/catalog/PIA06071">PIA06071</a>). 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org/">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06086" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06086: Mapping Titan's Surface sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06086: Mapping Titan's Surface sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06086: Mapping Titan's Surface
<h1>PIA08126: Titan Shines Through</h1><div class="PIA08126" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08126" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08126: Titan Shines Through sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08126: Titan Shines Through sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08126: Titan Shines Through
<h1>PIA08231: Saturn's View of Titan</h1><div class="PIA08231" lang="en" style="width:392px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>As it approached Titan for yet another revealing encounter, the Cassini spacecraft acquired this image showing terrain on the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere.</p><p>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.</p><p>Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08231" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08231: Saturn's View of Titan sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08231: Saturn's View of Titan sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08231: Saturn's View of Titan
<h1>PIA07963: Titan Volcano in Several Infrared Wavelengths</h1><div class="PIA07963" lang="en" style="width:553px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/figures/PIA07963_fig1.jpg"></a><br>Titan Volcano in Several Infrared Wavelengths</p><p>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). </p><p>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. </p><p>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. </p><p>These images were taken during Cassini's Oct. 26, 2004, flyby of Titan.</p><p>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. </p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at <a href="http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu">http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu</a>. </p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07963" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA07963: Titan Volcano in Several Infrared Wavelengths sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA07963: Titan Volcano in Several Infrared Wavelengths sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA07963: Titan Volcano in Several Infrared Wavelengths
<h1>PIA06090: Purple Haze</h1><div class="PIA06090" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>[This caption was modified on March 16, 2005.]</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06090" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06090: Purple Haze sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06090: Purple Haze sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06090: Purple Haze
<h1>PIA09804: Adiri in View</h1><div class="PIA09804" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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.</p><p>North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated 21 degrees to the left.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09804" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA09804: Adiri in View sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA09804: Adiri in View sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA09804: Adiri in View
<h1>PIA07518: One View, Multiple Worlds</h1><div class="PIA07518" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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.</p><p>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).</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07518" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA07518: One View, Multiple Worlds sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA07518: One View, Multiple Worlds sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA07518: One View, Multiple Worlds
titan_pano_color.jpg
titan_pano_color.jpg
<h1>PIA10503: Watching for Clouds</h1><div class="PIA10503" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>The Cassini spacecraft peeks through the murk of Titan's thick atmosphere in a search for clouds.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov" class="external free" target="wpext">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org" class="external free" target="wpext">http://ciclops.org</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10503" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA10503: Watching for Clouds sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA10503: Watching for Clouds sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA10503: Watching for Clouds
<h1>PIA02290: Titan</h1><div class="PIA02290" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;">This narrow-angle camera image of Titan was taken through the Clear filter from a distance of 0.9 million km on 25 August 1981. With a phase angle of 155 degrees, the thick atmosphere can be seen illuminated completely around the disk. A distinct upper haze layer is present over much of the circumference of the disk. JPL managed the Voyager Project for NASA's Office of Space Science.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02290" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA02290: Titan sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA02290: Titan sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA02290: Titan
<h1>PIA06110: Titan's South Polar Clouds</h1><div class="PIA06110" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org/">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06110" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06110: Titan's South Polar Clouds sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06110: Titan's South Polar Clouds sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06110: Titan's South Polar Clouds
<h1>PIA08733: Titan's Crescent View</h1><div class="PIA08733" lang="en" style="width:617px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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. </p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a> The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at <a href="http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu">http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08733" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08733: Titan's Crescent View sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08733: Titan's Crescent View sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08733: Titan's Crescent View
<h1>PIA08352: Improving the View of Titan</h1><div class="PIA08352" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08352" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08352: Improving the View of Titan sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08352: Improving the View of Titan sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08352: Improving the View of Titan
<h1>PIA06159: Titan Mosaic: December 2004</h1><div class="PIA06159" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This mosaic of images taken at 28 footprints shows the regional coverage taken during Cassini's second encounter of Titan on Dec. 13, 2004.</p><p>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).</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org/">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06159" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06159: Titan Mosaic: December 2004 sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06159: Titan Mosaic: December 2004 sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06159: Titan Mosaic: December 2004
<h1>PIA01533: Titan Haze</h1><div class="PIA01533" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;">Layers of haze covering Saturn's satellite Titan are seen in this image taken by Voyager 1 on Nov. 12, 1980 at a range of 22,000 kilometers (13,700 miles). The colors are false and are used to show details of the haze that covers Titan. The upper level of the thick aerosol above the satellite's limb appears orange. The divisions in the haze occur at altitudes of 200, 375 and 500 kilometers (124, 233 and 310 miles) above the limb of the moon.<p>JPL manages the Voyager project for NASA's Office of Space Science.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01533" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA01533: Titan Haze sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA01533: Titan Haze sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA01533: Titan Haze
<h1>PIA10536: Saturn's View of Titan's Trailing Hemisphere</h1><div class="PIA10536" lang="en" style="width:785px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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. <p><p>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.<p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov" class="external free" target="wpext">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org" class="external free" target="wpext">http://ciclops.org</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10536" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA10536: Saturn's View of Titan's Trailing Hemisphere sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA10536: Saturn's View of Titan's Trailing Hemisphere sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA10536: Saturn's View of Titan's Trailing Hemisphere
<h1>PIA09218: Titan (T30) Viewed by Cassini's Radar - May 12, 2007</h1><div class="PIA09218" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This north polar image of Titan was acquired by Cassini’s radar instrument on May 12, 2007. </p><p>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 <a href="/catalog/PIA08365">PIA08365</a>). 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.</p><p>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 <a href="/catalog/PIA09211">PIA09211</a>). 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.</p><p>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. </p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09218" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA09218: Titan (T30) Viewed by Cassini's Radar - May 12, 2007 sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA09218: Titan (T30) Viewed by Cassini's Radar - May 12, 2007 sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA09218: Titan (T30) Viewed by Cassini's Radar - May 12, 2007
<h1>PIA06125: Revealing Titan's Surface</h1><div class="PIA06125" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org/">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06125" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06125: Revealing Titan's Surface sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06125: Revealing Titan's Surface sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06125: Revealing Titan's Surface
<h1>PIA06232: Channels on Titan?</h1><div class="PIA06232" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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.</p><p>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 <a href="/catalog/PIA06222">PIA06222</a>) 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06232" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06232: Channels on Titan? sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06232: Channels on Titan? sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06232: Channels on Titan?
<h1>PIA06122: High Haze in Color</h1><div class="PIA06122" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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 (<a href="/catalog/PIA06120">PIA06120</a>). The globe of Titan and the haze have been given colors that are close to what the natural colors are believed to be.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org/">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06122" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06122: High Haze in Color sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06122: High Haze in Color sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06122: High Haze in Color
<h1>PIA06235: Bright-Dark Boundary Close-up</h1><div class="PIA06235" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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.</p><p>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 <a href="/catalog/PIA06222">PIA06222</a>).</p><p>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 <a href="/catalog/PIA06202">PIA06202</a>).</p><p>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 <a href="/catalog/PIA07368">PIA07368</a>). 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.).</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06235" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06235: Bright-Dark Boundary Close-up sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06235: Bright-Dark Boundary Close-up sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06235: Bright-Dark Boundary Close-up
<h1>PIA09211: Coasts and Drowned Mountains</h1><div class="PIA09211" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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 <a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08930">http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08930</a>).</p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. </p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09211" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA09211: Coasts and Drowned Mountains sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA09211: Coasts and Drowned Mountains sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA09211: Coasts and Drowned Mountains
<h1>PIA07634: The Land Beneath the Murk</h1><div class="PIA07634" lang="en" style="width:571px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>The "H"-shaped region Fensal-Aztlan is faintly visible on Saturn's murky moon Titan in this enhanced clear-filter view from Cassini.</p><p>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.</p><p>At the upper left, dark wavelike features in the atmosphere encircle the moon's north pole.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07634" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA07634: The Land Beneath the Murk sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA07634: The Land Beneath the Murk sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA07634: The Land Beneath the Murk
<h1>PIA10654: Tectonics on Titan</h1><div class="PIA10654" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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, <a href="/catalog/PIA08454">PIA08454</a>). 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov" class="external free" target="wpext">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10654" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA10654: Tectonics on Titan sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA10654: Tectonics on Titan sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA10654: Tectonics on Titan
<h1>PIA03565: Titan's Rain Drains to the Plains</h1><div class="PIA03565" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>In contrast to (<a href="/catalog/PIA03564">PIA03564</a>), 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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. </p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03565" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA03565: Titan's Rain Drains to the Plains sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA03565: Titan's Rain Drains to the Plains sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA03565: Titan's Rain Drains to the Plains
<h1>PIA07229: Expected Footprints of 36-Image Panoramas from Huygens Camera</h1><div class="PIA07229" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/figures/PIA07229_fig1.jpg"></a><br>Figure 1</p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>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).</p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>. For more information about the visualand infrared mapping spectrometer visit <a href="http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/">http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/</a>. </p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07229" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA07229: Expected Footprints of 36-Image Panoramas from Huygens Camera sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA07229: Expected Footprints of 36-Image Panoramas from Huygens Camera sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA07229: Expected Footprints of 36-Image Panoramas from Huygens Camera
<h1>PIA08907: Circumpolar Bands</h1><div class="PIA08907" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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.</p><p>The view was taken from about 50 degrees above Titan's equatorial plane. Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08907" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08907: Circumpolar Bands sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08907: Circumpolar Bands sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08907: Circumpolar Bands
<h1>PIA08114: Fish-eye View of Titan's Surface</h1><div class="PIA08114" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/figures/PIA08114_fig1.jpg"></a><br />Annotated Fish-eye View<br />of Titan's Surface</p><p>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.<p></p>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. <p></p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a></p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08114" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08114: Fish-eye View of Titan's Surface sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08114: Fish-eye View of Titan's Surface sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08114: Fish-eye View of Titan's Surface
<h1>PIA06181: Close Titan Flyby 3, Image #2</h1><div class="PIA06181" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This image was taken during Cassini's third close approach to Titan on Feb. 15, 2005.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a> and the Cassini imaging team home page, <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06181" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA06181: Close Titan Flyby 3, Image #2 sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA06181: Close Titan Flyby 3, Image #2 sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA06181: Close Titan Flyby 3, Image #2
<h1>PIA01465: Hubble Observes Surface of Titan</h1><div class="PIA01465" lang="en" style="width:600px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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 <a href="http://oposite.stsci.edu/" class="external free" target="wpext">http://oposite.stsci.edu/</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01465" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA01465: Hubble Observes Surface of Titan sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA01465: Hubble Observes Surface of Titan sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA01465: Hubble Observes Surface of Titan