PIA00733: Titan's Brighter Southern Hemisphere

Target Name: Titan Is a satellite of: Saturn Mission: Voyager Spacecraft: Voyager 1 Instrument: Imaging Science Subsystem - Narrow Angle Product Size: 400 samples x 400 lines Produced By: JPL Producer ID: P23057 Addition Date: 1997-09-25 Primary Data Set: Voyager EDRs Full-Res TIFF: PIA00733.tif (37.73 kB) Full-Res JPEG: PIA00733.jpg (4.127 kB)

Original Caption Released with Image: Titan, the largest of Saturn's 14 known satellites, shows little more than the upper layers of clouds covering the moon in this Voyager 1 picture, taken on November 4, 1980 at a range of 12 million kilometers (7,560,000 miles). The orange colored haze, believed to be composed of photochemically produced hydrocarbons, hides Titan's solid surface from the Voyager cameras. Some weak shadings in the clouds are becoming visible. However, note that the satellite's southern (lower) hemisphere is brighter than the northern. It is not known whether these subtle shadings are on the surface or are due to clouds below a high haze layer. The Voyager project is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA. Image Credit: NASA/JPL