A Portrait of Saturn's Hazy Moon Titan: Big Pic
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Feb. 4, 2012 -- On Jan. 30, the Cassini spacecraft executed a flyby maneuver of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, passing within 19,340 miles (31,130 km) of its surface.
This color composite image of the cloud-covered moon was created by combining raw data acquired with Cassini's Imaging Science System (ISS) in red, green, blue and clear color channels. The result is a color image approximating what the human eye might see, albeit somewhat brighter due to the low levels of light at Saturn's distance from the sun.
SCIENCE CHANNEL: Explore the Saturnian System with Cassini
Titan's high-level haze is visible as a pale indigo-colored ring around the moon, thicker at the poles and appearing slightly detached at the north pole, especially. This feature is referred to as the "polar hood". (North is about 45º diagonal to the upper left.)
The haze is composed of complex hydrocarbons, the result of sunlight breaking down methane in the moon's atmosphere. It rises higher above Titan's surface than our own atmosphere -- up to ten times higher!
BIG PIC: Peering Deep into Titan's Impressive Atmosphere
The dark features on Titan's surface are vast fields of gigantic dunes, also made of hydrocarbons and standing hundreds of feet high. They cover a total area roughly the size of the United States.
At 3,200 miles (5,150 km) wide, Titan is the second-largest moon in the solar system (Jupiter's Ganymede is the first) but the only moon known to possess a substantial atmosphere.
See more images from Cassini on the JPL mission page and on the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) site.
BIG PIC: Titan Swallows Tethys
-- by Jason Major.
Image credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute. Color composite by Jason Major.
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