Image: Highlighting Titan's hazes

Image: Highlighting Titan's hazes
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks toward the night side of Saturn's moon Titan in a view that highlights the extended, hazy nature of the moon's atmosphere. During its long mission at Saturn, Cassini has frequently observed Titan at viewing angles like this, where the atmosphere is backlit by the Sun, in order to make visible the structure of the hazes.

Titan's high-altitude haze layer appears blue here, whereas the main atmospheric haze is orange. The difference in color could be due to particle sizes in the haze. The blue haze likely consists of smaller particles than the orange haze.

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural-color view. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 29, 2017. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.2 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Titan. Image scale is 5 miles (9 kilometers) per pixel.

More information: For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov , www.nasa.gov/cassini

Provided by NASA

Citation: Image: Highlighting Titan's hazes (2017, August 15) retrieved 28 March 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2017-08-image-highlighting-titan-hazes.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

Explore further

Image: Haze on the Saturn horizon

4 shares

Feedback to editors