A day after entering orbit around Saturn, Cassini sped silently past
Titan, imaging the moon's south polar region. This natural color image
represents Cassini's view only about two hours after closest approach to
the moon.
The superimposed coordinate system grid in the accompanying image at
right illustrates the geographical regions of the moon that are
illuminated and visible, as well as the orientation of Titan -- lines of
longitude converge on the South Pole above the center of the image. The
yellow curve marks the position of the boundary between day and night on
Titan.
Images taken through blue, green and red filters were combined to create
this natural color view. The images were obtained using the Cassini
spacecraft wide angle camera on July 2, 2004, from a distance of about
347,000 kilometers (216,000 miles) from Titan and at a
Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase angle of 62 degrees. This view is an
improvement in resolution of nearly a factor of four over the previously
released natural color view of Titan (see PIA06081). The image scale is
21 kilometers (13 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 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.