Posts Tagged titan
Titan and Dione
Today’s APOD is not to be missed! (But I’m a sucker for images of Saturn and the moons thereof.)
Orbiting in the plane of Saturn’s rings, Saturnian moons have a perpetual ringside view of the gorgeous gas giant planet. Of course, while passing near the ring plane the Cassini spacecraft also shares their stunning perspective. The rings themselves can be seen slicing across the middle of this Cassini snapshot from May of last year. The scene features Titan, largest, and Dione, third largest moon of Saturn. Remarkably thin, the bright rings still cast arcing shadows across the planet’s cloud tops at the bottom of the frame. Pale Dione is about 1,100 kilometers across and orbits over 300,000 kilometers from the visible outer edge of the A ring. Dione is seen through Titan’s atmospheric haze. At 5,150 kilometers across, Titan is about 2.3 million kilometers from Cassini, while Dione is 3.2 million kilometers away.
Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA
Moons
Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI; Color composite: Emily Lakdawalla
Cassini is probably my favorite planetary explorer to date. There’s just something about Saturn, it’s a playground of wonders. I’m amazed at the variation in the moons, from fuzzy atmospheres to dirty iceballs to… Death Stars.
Still, as far as I’m concerned, as satellites go… east or west, home is best.
Earth's Moon, as seen from Space Shuttle Discovery (Credit: STS-131 crew)
Tethys and Titan
Hard to decide what to post after yesterday’s anniversary and news… all I know is, posting retro space race ads seemed wildly inappropriate. So here you go. It’s Titan with Tethys in the distance, courtesy of Cassini.
What’s that behind Titan? It’s another of Saturn’s moons: Tethys. The robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn captured the heavily cratered Tethys slipping behind Saturn’s atmosphere-shrouded Titan late last year. The largest crater on Tethys, Odysseus, is easily visible on the distant moon. Titan shows not only its thick and opaque orange lower atmosphere, but also an unusual upper layer of blue-tinted haze. Tethys, at about 2 million kilometers distant, was twice as far from Cassini as was Titan when the above image was taken. In 2004, Cassini released the Hyugens probe which landed on Titan and provided humanity’s first views of the surface of the Solar System’s only known lake-bearing moon.
Titan's Atmosphere
Posted by Danielle in Perspectives on October 9, 2008
This NASA Image of the Day shows Saturn’s moon Titan, with a beautiful and complementary atmospheric halo.
With its thick, distended atmosphere, Titan’s orange globe shines softly, encircled by a thin halo of purple light-scattering haze.
This composite image was created using taken using blue, green and red spectral filters to create this enhanced-color view; the color images were combined with an ultraviolet view that makes the high-altitude, detached layer of haze visible. The ultraviolet part of the composite image was given a purplish hue to match the bluish-purple color of the upper atmospheric haze seen in visible light.
Small particles that populate high hazes in Titan’s atmosphere scatter short wavelengths more efficiently than longer visible or infrared wavelengths, so the best possible observations of the detached layer are made in ultraviolet light.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
-
About Silver Rockets
This blog celebrates space exploration, human spaceflight and the heavens, through lots and lots ofimages.
My name is Danielle Signor, and I am a space cadet. STS-133 NASA Tweetup Attendee!
This is a blog, NOT A SHOP. Click the images for their source or purchase link, if available.
-
Subscribe
-
Danielle Recommends...
-
Elsewhere on the Web
