Click on the image for QuickTime movie of
Titan's Geological Goldmine
Cassini's powerful radar eyes have uncovered a geologic goldmine in a
region called Xanadu on Saturn's moon Titan. Panning west to east, the
geologic features include river channels, mountains and hills, a crater
and possible lakes.
The movie shows the location mapped with the Cassini Radar Mapper using
its Synthetic Aperture Radar imaging mode on April 30, 2006. The global
map shows the areas mapped so far by radar. The radar swaths are
superimposed on a false-color image made from observations by NASA's
Hubble Space Telescope.
Cassini's radar has revealed a variety of geologic features, including
impact craters, wind-blown deposits, channels and cryovolcanic 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 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.
