Dancing in the dark

Ghostly details make this dark scene more than just a beautiful grouping of two Saturn moons: Tethys and Titan.
In Titan's thick and inflated atmosphere, the detached high haze layer can be seen, as well as the complex Northern Polar "hood". Images like this one can help scientists make definitive estimates of the altitudes to which the high haze extends.
The faint vertical banded pattern is a type of noise that usually is removed during image processing.
Since this image was processed to enhance the visibility of details in Titan's atmosphere as well as in the faint G-Ring, the vertical noise was also enhanced.

This view was obtained in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 19, 2006, at a distance of approx. 2,4 MKM (such as about 1,5 MMs) from Titan and 1 MKM (about 600.000 miles) from Tethys. The image scale is 14 Km (about 9 miles) per pixel on Titan and 6 Km (about 4 miles) per pixel on Tethys.