Spying on Titan
The Cassini spacecraft spies Titan's south polar vortex from below the moon in this image. Imaging scientists are monitoring the vortex to study its seasonal development.
For a color image of the south polar vortex on Titan, see Titan's Colorful South Polar Vortex. For a movie of the vortex, see Titan's South Polar Vortex in Motion.
This view looks toward the anti-Saturn hemisphere of Titan (3,200 miles, or 5,150 kilometers across). North on Titan is up and rotated 36 degrees to the left. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 13, 2012 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 889 nanometers.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 73 degrees. Image scale is 6 miles (9 kilometers) per pixel.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
<< Previous Cassini
