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Composite of Titan's Surface Seen During Descent
January 15, 2005 Full-Res: PIA07230
This composite was produced from images returned yesterday, January 14, 2005, by the European Space Agency's Huygens
probe during its successful descent to land on Titan. It shows a full 360-degree view around Huygens. The left-hand
side, behind Huygens, shows a boundary between light and dark areas. The white streaks seen near this boundary could be
ground 'fog,' as they were not immediately visible from higher altitudes.
As the probe descended, it drifted over a plateau (center of image) and was heading towards its landing site in a dark
area (right). From the drift of the probe, the wind speed has been estimated at around 6-7 kilometers (about 4 miles)
per hour.
These images were taken from an altitude of about 8 kilometers ( about 5 miles) with a resolution of about 20 meters
(about 65 feet) per pixel. The images were taken by the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer, one of two NASA instruments
on the probe. 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 Cassini orbiter and its two
onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Descent Imager/Spectral team is based at the
University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm .
Credit: ESA/NASA/Univ. of Arizona