Titan Mosaic – Feb 2005

This mosaic of Titan's surface was made from 16 images. The individual images have been specially processed to remove effects of Titan's hazy atmosphere and to improve visibility of the surface near the terminator (the boundary between day and night).

During Cassini's first close flyby of Titan in October 2004, many clouds were seen near the south pole; in the December flyby many clouds were seen at mid-latitudes (see http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06157). During this flyby, only a few small clouds near the south pole were noted.
Imaging coverage during this flyby included improved looks at territory to the north and west of Xanadu, the large bright white area.

The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light and were acquired at distances ranging from approximately 226,000 to 242,000 kilometers (140,000 to 150,000 miles) from Titan. Resolution in the images is about 1.3 kilometers (0.8 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 . For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute