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Aug 18, 2018
Seeing Titan
Image Credit & Copyright: Astronomy Picture of the Day -- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Courtesy of http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Seeing Titan
Image Credit & Copyright: Astronomy Picture of the Day -- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Courtesy of http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Shrouded in a thick atmosphere,
Saturn's largest moon Titan
really is hard to see.
Small particles suspended in the upper atmosphere cause an almost
impenetrable haze, strongly scattering light at visible wavelengths
and hiding Titan's surface features from prying eyes.
But Titan's
surface is better imaged at
infrared wavelengths where
scattering is weaker and atmospheric absorption is reduced.
Arrayed around this centered visible light image of Titan are
some of the clearest global infrared views of the
tantalizing moon so far.
In false color,
the
six panels present a consistent processing of 13 years of
infrared image data from the
Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) on board
the Cassini spacecraft.
They offer a stunning comparison with Cassini's visible light view.
