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White Clouds near the South Pole of Titan
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This image shows Titan, Saturn's largest moon (5.150 Km - 3.200 miles - across), with a streak-like cloud near its South Pole. The cloud may be part of a region of polar clouds seen during Cassini’s first flyby of Titan in July 2004, only now covering a larger area.
Titan's atmosphere, like that of Earth, is mostly nitrogen. The pressure at Titan’s surface is 50% higher than on Earth, despite its lower gravity, meaning that the mass of the atmosphere per unit area is more than 10 times that on Earth.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Sept. 23, 2004, at a distance of 7.1 MKMs (4.4 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 84°.
The image scale is 42 Km (26 miles) per pixel.
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