CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Titan's Sideways Cipher

Titan's Sideways Cipher
PIA 07730
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   This processed image from Cassini's August 22, 2005 flyby of Titan reveals mid-latitudes on the moon's Saturn-facing side. This region has been imaged previously by Cassini, although the recent approach has improved the moderate-resolution coverage of the area.

Provisional names recently have been applied to a number of features on Titan. Features within the region seen here - long known informally as "the H" - now have names like Tsegihi, Aztlan and Quivira.

The bright 215-kilometer (134-mile) wide feature provisionally named "Bazaruto Facula" is clearly visible right of center, with its dark, unnamed 80-kilometer (50-mile) wide crater at its center.

For other views of this terrain on Titan, see PIA06220, PIA06222 and "Cassini's Views of Titan."

This view was acquired from a distance of approximately 159,000 kilometers (99,000 miles) from Titan using a spectral filter centered on infrared wavelengths at 939 nanometers. The image scale is 9 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel. Previous observations indicate that, due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few times larger than the actual pixel scale.

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: August 25, 2005 (PIA 07730)
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