Radar Image Shows Titan's Surface Live and in Color

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Carolina Martinez (818) 354-9382
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Image Advisory: 2004-270 November 5, 2004

Radar Image Shows Titan's Surface Live and in Color

Saturn's moon Titan shows a sharp contrast between its smooth and
rough edges in a new false-color radar image.

Titan's surface lies beneath a thick coat of hazy clouds, but
Cassini's radar instrument can peer through to show finer surface
features. Scientists have added color to emphasize finer details
on Titan, as shown in the image.

This image can be viewed at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini . To provide a better perspective of
the surface features, the color image is shown next to a black-
and-white image that was previously released.

Brighter areas may correspond to rougher terrains, slopes facing
the radar, or different materials. The pink colors enhance
smaller details on the surface, while the green color represents
smoother areas. Winding linear features that cut across dark
areas may be ridges or channels, although their nature is not yet
understood. A large dark circular feature is seen at the western
(top left) end of the image, but very few features on Titan
resembling fresh impact craters are seen.

The area shown is in the northern hemisphere of Titan and is
about 150 kilometers (93 miles) wide by 300 kilometers (186
miles) long. The image is a part of a larger strip created from
data taken on Oct. 26, 2004, when the Cassini spacecraft flew
approximately 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) above Titan's surface.
The radar instrument works by bouncing radio signals off Titan's
surface and timing their return. This is similar to timing the
returning echo of your voice across a canyon to tell how wide the
canyon is. Approximately 1 percent of Titan's surface was mapped
during the Oct. 26 flyby.

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 Cassini-Huygens mission for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The radar
instrument team is based at JPL.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL
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