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Titan Flyby – Dec. 5, 2007

The murky orange disk of Saturn's moon Titan glides past -- a silent, floating sphere transiting Saturn. Titan's photochemical smog completely obscures the surface in such natural color views. Its high-altitude hazes are visible against the disk of Saturn as they attenuate the light reflected by the planet.

The Cassini spacecraft performed a southern hemisphere pass of Titan's surface on Dec. 5. The infrared camera took high-resolution images of a dark region called Ontario Lacus, which may be a large lake, first spotted by the imaging cameras in 2005. The Huygens probe landing site was also imaged.

Date
Dec. 5, 2007

Altitude
807 miles (1,300 km)

Speed
14,000 mph (6.3 km/sec)