The Cassini spacecraft once again dons its special infrared glasses to peer through Titan's haze and monitor its surface. Here, Cassini has recaptured the equatorial region dubbed "Senkyo." The dark features are believed to be vast dunes of hydrocarbon particles that precipitated out of Titan's atmosphere.
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) across. For more on Senkyo, see PIA08231.
This view looks toward Saturn-facing hemisphere of Titan. North on Titan is up and rotated 4 degrees to the left. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 16, 2013 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
The Cassini spacecraft peers through Titan's thick clouds to spy on the region dubbed "Senkyo" by scientists. The dark features include vast fields of dunes, composed of solid hydrocarbon particles precipitated out of Titan's atmosphere. And Titan's southern pole is shrouded in the recently formed polar vortex.
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) across.
For more on Senkyo, see PIA08231. For a color image of the south polar vortex on Titan, see PIA14919. For a movie of the vortex, see PIA14920.
Lit terrain seen here is on the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Titan. North on Titan is up and rotated 18 degrees to the right. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on January 5, 2013 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 750,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 79 degrees. Image scale is 4 miles (7 kilometers) per pixel.
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
The Cassini spacecraft simultaneously peers through the haze in Titan's equatorial region down to its surface and captures the vortex of clouds hovering over its south pole just to the right of the terminator on the moon's dark side.
The dark region near Titan's equator is Senkyo. See PIA11636 for a closer view of Senkyo and to learn more. For a color image of the south polar vortex on Titan, see PIA14919. For a movie of the vortex, see PIA14920.
Lit terrain seen here is on the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Titan (3,200 miles, or 5,150 kilometers across). North on Titan is up and rotated 11 degrees to the left. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on September 20, 2012 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.8 million miles (2.9 million kilometers) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 84 degrees. Image scale is 11 miles (17 kilometers) per pixel.
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
