A global detached haze layer and discrete cloud-like features high above
Titan's northern terminator (day-night transition) are visible in this
close-up image acquired on October 24, 2004, as the Cassini spacecraft
neared its first close encounter with Titan. This image is a colorized
version of an ultraviolet image released on October 25, 2004 (PIA06120).
The haze has been given colors that are close to what the natural colors
are believed to be. The view was also sharpened to enhance the structure
in the discrete features.
The image was acquired at a distance of about 1 million kilometers
(621,371 miles) in a near ultraviolet filter that is sensitive to
scattering by small particles. The Sun preferentially illuminates the
southern hemisphere at this time; the north polar region is in darkness.
The well-known global detached haze layer, hundreds of kilometers above
Titan's surface, is produced by photochemical reactions and is visible as
a thin ring of bright material around the entire planet. At the northern
high-latitude edge of the image, additional striations are visible,
caused by particulates that are high enough to be illuminated by the Sun
even though the surface directly below is in darkness. These striations
may simply be caused by a wave propagating through the detached haze, or
they may be evidence of additional regional haze or cloud layers not
present at other latitudes.
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.
