As Cassini continues its reconnoitering flybys of Titan, the imaging
science team continues to improve its ability to tease out surface details
hidden in the unprocessed images. This mosaic provides the best view yet
obtained by Cassini's cameras, showing terrain on the moon's sub-Saturn
hemisphere -- the side of the moon that always faces toward Saturn.
This mosaic has better resolution, both in pixel scale and from improved
signal-to-noise, compared to previous views of the area. "Signal-to-noise"
is a term scientists use to refer to the amount of meaningful or useful
information (signal) in their data versus the amount of background noise.
A higher signal-to-noise ratio yields sharper, clearer views of Titan's
surface.
The view is centered on terrain in the Fensal-Aztlan region on Titan, at
0.03 degrees south latitude, 22.18 degrees west longitude. The mosaic
covers an area 3,500 kilometers (2,180 miles) north to south and 3,600
kilometers (2,240 miles) west to east. North is up.
The mosaic consists of 17 frames taken using a spectral filter sensitive
to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. Each frame
was created by combining and specially processing four individual images
of the same region of Titan's surface. The frames were then sharpened to
improve visibility of surface features.
The images in this mosaic were taken using the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera at distances ranging from 81,200 to 119,500 kilometers
(50,500 to 74,300 miles) and at a sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of
about 25 degrees.
The original image scale ranged from 470 to 700 meters (1,540 to 2,300
feet) per pixel. Because the actual resolution on Titan is a few times the
pixel scale, this orthographic projection mosaic was scaled to 1 kilometer
(0.6 mile) 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.