|
|
Aaru and Senkyo
|
As it approached Titan for yet another revealing encounter, the Cassini spacecraft acquired this image showing terrain on the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere.
Prominent dark areas found in the moon's equatorial region appear to contain vast and continuous dune fields, discovered by the Cassini Radar experiment and likely composed of particles that drop from Titan's unique, smoggy atmosphere.
The Dark Regions seen here are provisionally named Aaru and Senkyo, with parts of Western Fensal and Aztlan showing at left, near the terminator.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 752 nanometers. The view was obtained on July 2, 2006 at a distance of approx. 163.000 Km (about 101.000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 62°.
Image scale is roughly 19 Km (such as about 12 miles) per pixel.
|
|