NASA Cassini Image: Titan’s Dark Terrain
This view from Cassini’s second close flyby of Titan on Dec. 13, 2004 shows bright material within the large dark region west of Xanadu. The area in this image is a region that has not previously been seen by Cassini at this high resolution.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera at a distance of approximately 125,900 kilometers (78,200 miles) from Titan, using a filter centered at 938 nanometers that emphasizes the moon’s surface and clouds. The image scale is 735 meters (2,400 feet) 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 .
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
