These images show two views of Titan's planet-wide stratospheric haze
just before (left) and after (right) Cassini's first close encounter with
the shrouded moon. The image on the left was taken on Oct. 25, 2004,
through an ultraviolet filter, which is sensitive to scattering of
sunlight by small haze particles. It shows the high-altitude haze at the
north pole (top) illuminated above a surface blanketed in darkness during
this winter season. Numerous striations are visible in the haze,
indicating either waves passing through the layer or the presence of
multiple layers. The pixel scale of this image is 2.8 kilometers (1.7
miles).
The image on the right was taken on Oct. 26, 2004, and shows Titan's
night-side backlit by the Sun after Cassini's closest approach to the
moon. The haze layer ringing the planet is illuminated because the small
particles scatter significant sunlight in the forward direction.
Variations in haze concentration and thickness around the globe are also
evident and seem to be symmetric around the north pole (upper left). The
pixel scale of this image is 6.6 kilometers (4.1 miles).
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 Science Mission
Directorate, 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 the latest news about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. For more information about the mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page,
http://ciclops.org .
