This specially processed composite view reveals a tremendous amount of
structure in the northern polar atmosphere of Titan. The hazes in Titan's
atmosphere are known to extend hundreds of kilometers above the surface.
Structure visible here could be due to multiple detached hazes, or waves
in the atmosphere that propagate through stably stratified layers.
Ten images taken during a brief period were processed to enhance fine
detail and then were combined to create this view.
North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up.
The images were taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on Jan. 18, 2006 at a distance of approximately 2.2
million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Titan and at a
Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 155 degrees. Image scale is 13
kilometers (8 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 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 operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
