Cassini: Hazy Ring (Titan)

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Cassini: Hazy Ring (Titan)

Post by bystander » Mon Jun 18, 2012 6:25 pm

NASA | JPL-Caltech | Cassini Solstice Mission | CICLOPS | 2012 Jun 18

Hazy Ring

The Cassini spacecraft looks toward the dark side of Saturn's largest moon and captures the halo-like ring produced by sunlight scattering through the periphery of Titan's atmosphere.

A detached, high-altitude global haze layer encircles Titan. See Titan's Halo to learn more. This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of Titan (3,200 miles, or 5,150 kilometers across). North on Titan is up and rotated 29 degrees to the left.

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 30, 2012. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 123,000 miles (197,000 kilometers) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 162 degrees. Image scale is 7 miles (12 kilometers) per pixel.
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Pretty picture: Halo on a halo?
Planetary Society | Emily Lakdawalla | 2012 June 15
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=28903#p177863
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