Descent Panorama of Saturns Titan
Explanation:
You're the first spacecraft ever to descend to Titan -- what do you see?
Immediately after the
Huygen's probe
pierced the cloud deck of
Saturn's moon
Titan
last January, it took a unique series of pictures of one of the
Solar System's most mysterious moon's.
Those pictures have recently been digitally stitched together to create
spectacular panoramas and a dramatic
descent movie.
Pictured above
is a panoramic fisheye view Huygen's obtained from about five kilometers above
Titan's surface.
The digital projection makes the local surface, mostly flat, appear as a ball,
but allows one to see in all directions.
Huygen's eventual
landing site
was in the large dark area below, just right of the center.
This relatively featureless, dark, sandy basin appears to be surrounded by
light colored hills to the right and a landscape fractured by
streambeds and canyons above.
Recent evidence indicates that Titan's lakebeds and
streambeds are usually dry but sometimes filled with a flashflood of liquid
methane from rare torrents of
methane rain.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
