The Cassini orbiter continues its observations of Saturn's mysterious moon
Titan, stealing another early peek at the haze-enshrouded surface.
Cassini's view of Titan now surpasses Earth-based observations in its
ability to show detail.
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is a prime target for the European-built
Huygens probe onboard Cassini. Perpetually enshrouded by a hazy
atmosphere, scientists believe Titan may harbor methane seas and organic
chemicals, possibly like those on the early Earth. Huygens will be the
first probe to descend to the surface of a moon of another planet, and
is by far the most distant descent of a robotic probe ever attempted on
another object in the solar system.
The Cassini spacecraft was 29.3 million kilometers (18.2 million miles)
from Titan on May 5, 2004, when the image on the left was taken through
one of the narrow angle camera's spectral filters specifically designed
to penetrate the moon's thick atmosphere. The image scale is 176
kilometers (109 miles) per pixel, an improvement in resolution of 30
percent over the images released on May 6.
The image has been magnified 10 times and has been enhanced in contrast
to bring out details. The mottled pattern is an artifact of the
processing. The larger scale brightness variations are real. No further
processing to remove the effects of the overlying atmosphere has been
performed.
The superimposed coordinate system grid in the accompanying image on the
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 180 to 250 degrees west
longitude, and overlaps part of the surface shown in the previous Cassini
image release PIA05390.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
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.
