CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Senkyo Through the Clouds

Cassini once again dons its special infrared glasses to peer through Titan's haze and monitor its surface. Here, Cassini has recaptured the equatorial region dubbed "Senkyo". The dark features are believed to be vast dunes of hydrocarbon particles that precipitated out of Titan's atmosphere.

Kraken Mare, a sea of liquid hydrocarbons equivalent in size to the Mediterranean on the Earth, can be seen in the north polar region.

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is 3200 miles (5150 kilometers) across. For more on Senkyo, see PIA08231.

This view looks toward Saturn-facing hemisphere of Titan. North is up and rotated 4 degrees to the left. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 16, 2013 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 13 degrees. Image scale is 9 miles (14 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini Solstice 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 Solstice Mission visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Released: October 28, 2013 (PIA 17134)
Image/Caption Information 		  Senkyo Through the Clouds
PIA 17134
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