This image composite was created with images taken during the Cassini
spacecraft's closest flyby of Titan on April 16, 2005. Cassini's cameras
have numerous filters that reveal features above and beneath the shroud
of Titan's atmosphere.
This monochrome view shows what Titan looks like at 938 nanometers, a
near-infrared wavelength that allows Cassini to see through the hazy
atmosphere and down to the surface. The view was created by combining
three separate images taken with this filter, in order to improve the
visibility of surface features. The variations in brightness on the
surface are real differences in the reflectivity of the materials on
Titan.
North on Titan is up and tilted 30 degrees to the right.
These images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera on
April 16, 2005, at distances ranging from approximately 173,000 to 168,200
kilometers (107,500 to 104,500 miles) from Titan and from a
Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 56 degrees. Resolution in the
images is approximately 10 kilometers 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.
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