Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Cassini?s finely-tuned vision reveals hazes high in the skies over Titan in this narrow angle camera image from May 22, 2004. Here the northern hemisphere is notably brighter than the southern hemisphere. This trait was noticed in images returned by the Voyager spacecraft, but the effect is presently reversed, North to South, as Titan is currently experiencing opposite seasons from those during the Voyager epoch 23 years ago.
The image was taken from a distance of 21.7 million kilometers (13.5 million miles) from Saturn through a filter sensitive to strong absorption by methane gas (centered at 889 nanometers). The image scale is 129 kilometers (80 miles) 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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
In 1960, in preparation for the first SETI conference, Cornell astronomer Frank Drake formulated an…
The Pentagon office in charge of fielding UFO reports says that it has resolved 118…
The Daisy World model describes a hypothetical planet that self-regulates, maintaining a delicate balance involving…
Researchers have been keeping an eye on the center of a galaxy located about a…
When it comes to telescopes, bigger really is better. A larger telescope brings with it…
Pluto may have been downgraded from full-planet status, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hold…