CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Titan: Complex 'Anti-greenhouse'

This natural color image shows Titan's upper atmosphere - an active place where methane molecules are being broken apart by solar ultraviolet light and the byproducts combine to form chemically interesting compounds like ethane and acetylene. The haze preferentially scatters blue and ultraviolet wavelengths of light, making its complex layered structure more easily visible at these shorter wavelengths.

A movie sequence of images, taken around the same time as this color view, shows movement of the haze layers over the course of a few hours (see PIA06223).

Lower down in the atmosphere, the haze turns into a globe-enshrouding smog of complex organic molecules. This thick, orange-colored haze absorbs visible sunlight, allowing only perhaps 10 percent of the incident light to reach the surface. The thick haze also is inefficient at holding in and then re-radiating infrared (thermal) energy back down to the surface. Thus, despite the fact that Titan has a thicker atmosphere than Earth, the thick global haze causes the greenhouse effect there to be somewhat weaker than it is on Earth.

Images taken with the wide angle camera using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained from a distance of approximately 9,500 kilometers (5,900 miles) from Titan on March 31, 2005. The image scale is approximately 400 meters (1,300 feet) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Released: May 2, 2005 (PIA 06236)
Image/Caption Information 		  Titan: Complex 'Anti-greenhouse'
PIA 06236
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