Looking for Ice Volcano Flows at Hotei Regio

Two different instruments aboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft combined their observations to create a more detailed portrait of the Hotei Regio area on Saturn’s moon Titan, which these teams interpret as showing evidence of recent flows from ice volcanoes. The Titan radar mapper sees through Titan’s haze to reveal the highs and lows of the terrain in the topography map (top). In the second image down, arrows point to corresponding features seen in the mineral and chemical make-up of the region produced from data provided by Cassini’s visual and infrared spectrometer. Titan radar data (third image down) reveal the surface roughness of the area. Data from the two instruments were combined (bottom) to show areas that may have been dominated by past ice volcano flows, along with drainage channels and possible mountainous terrain. The “VIMS dark blue units” are areas thought to be rich in water ice.

Another view of the data is shown in Channels and Minerals at Hotei Regio.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini .

Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS/UA