Smiling Titan at Wolverine’s Den

Smiling Titan

21Feb06

The latest from Cassini offers another nice look at Saturn’s largest moon, Titan:

Infared view of Titan
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This infrared view shows features on the leading hemisphere of Titan, including the bright, crescent-shaped Hotei arcus (right of center), which is also informally called “the Smile” by researchers.

The view is centered on the bright region called Xanadu. Above center is the large crater Menrva, which is surrounded by darker material.

North on Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is up and rotated 30 degrees to the left.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 13, 2006 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The image was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 41 degrees. Image scale is 7 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.

The spacecraft’s next close encounter with Titan will be on February 27th, when Cassini will pass by the moon for the 12th time at a distance of 1,800 km (1,100 mi). The Cassini team plans to execute an additional 33 fly-bys of Titan over the course of the mission, and I’m sure the imagery and data received will prove invaluable.

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