CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Dark Belet

Cassini looks toward the dark region of Belet on Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

This large region on the moon has a low albedo, meaning it diffusely reflects little light. See PIA11149 to learn more. This view looks toward the area between the trailing hemisphere and anti-Saturn side of Titan (5150 kilometers, 3200 miles across). North on Titan is up and rotated 8 degrees to the left.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Dec. 28, 2009 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 939 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 282,000 kilometers (175,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 45 degrees. Image scale is 17 kilometers (10 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini Equinox Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. 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 Equinox Mission visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Released: March 1, 2010 (PIA 12559)
Image/Caption Information 		  Dark Belet
PIA 12559
Avg Rating: 8/10

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