This image was taken during Cassini's very close approach to Titan on Dec. 13, 2004.
Bright streaks of cloud in Titan's southern hemisphere are visible. Linear clouds such as these have appeared intermittently in this region of Titan.
The image was obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera at a distance of approximately 178,600 kilometers (111,000 miles) from Titan, through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 918 nanometers. The Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle is 15 degrees. The image scale is about 10.5 kilometers (6.5 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 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
