Titan's high haze layers are amazing. Cassini captured this detailed view
of the relatively faint haze in Titan's upper atmosphere as it receded
from its close encounter on March 31, 2005. Similar examples of such
complex structures in Titan's haze have been observed previously by
Cassini.
These observations will help reveal the processes responsible for forming
the numerous layers observed and how the structure and behavior of the
layers change on daily and seasonal time scales.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using
a filter sensitive to wavelengths of ultraviolet light centered at 338
nanometers and at a distance of 102,320 kilometers (63,579 miles) from
Titan. Image scale is about 600 meters (1,970 feet) 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 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.