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.
