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Alien Weather (False Colors; credits: Lunexit)
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A bright streak of cloud graces the Northern Skies of Titan.
This is the second time the Cassini spacecraft's imaging cameras have spotted clouds at 60° North Latitude on Titan - the previous occasion being the Feb. 2007 observations during which the cameras saw the dark, hydrocarbon lakes that cover much of the North.
That cloud feature is visible at the bottom of the still image in Exploring the Wetlands of Titan. The circular, 400-Km wide impact feature Menrva can be seen near center.
North on Titan is up and rotated 26° to the right.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 20, 2008 using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light centered at 938 and 746 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approx. 1,3 MKM (800.000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 58°. Image scale is roughly 8 Km per pixel. Due to scattering of light by Titan's hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few times larger than the actual pixel scale".
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(Dettagli)
