Images from the European Space Agency's Huygens probe descent
imager/spectral radiometer side-looking imager and from the medium
resolution imager, acquired after landing, were merged to produce this
image.
The horizon's position implies a pitch of the imager/spectral radiometer,
nose-upward, by 1 to 2 degrees with no measurable roll. "Stones" in the
foreground are 4 to 6 inches
(10 to 15 centimeters) in size, presumably made of water ice, and these
lie on a darker, finer-grained substrate. A region with a relatively low
number of rocks lies between clusters of rocks in the foreground and the
background and matches the general orientation of channel-like features
in the panorama of PIA06439). The scene
evokes the possibility of a dry lakebed.
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.
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.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
