This image is a portion of the swath acquired by the Cassini Titan radar
mapper on Feb. 15, 2005, on the mission's second opportunity to image the
surface with radar.
The frame, measuring about 300 kilometers (186 miles) from top to bottom,
shows an area near the northeast corner of the large optically bright
region named Xanadu.
Running across the image are a series of roughly parallel, mostly
east-west dark linear features that join and separate, which are not seen
in the previous radar images. They may be formed by the action of
eastward-flowing winds, or geologic processes acting on the crust itself.
In places they cut through adjacent terrain, while elsewhere the
lineaments seem to be interrupted by brighter material, appearing again
on the other side. Seams between radar segments are visible as horizontal,
sawtooth-shaped lines.
Bright material in radar images may be rough or sloped toward the radar
(which is observing from the top in this frame). Also, some of what is
seen may in fact be below the surface, revealed as the radio waves
penetrate overlying, radar-transparent material.
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 radar
instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the
United States and several European countries.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
