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> Saturn's moon Titan as seen by Cassini spacecraft

Saturn's moon Titan as seen by Cassini spacecraft

author: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/Novapix

reference: a-sat05-20022

Image Size 300 DPI: 17 * 17 cm

This near-infrared, color mosaic from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows the sun glinting off of Titan's north polar seas. The sunglint, also called a specular reflection, is the bright area near the 11 o'clock position at upper left. This mirror-like reflection, known as the specular point, is in the south of Titan's largest sea, Kraken Mare, just north of an island archipelago separating two separate parts of the sea. This particular sunglint was so bright as to saturate the detector of Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument, which captures the view. The southern portion of Kraken Mare (the area surrounding the specular feature toward upper left) displays a "bathtub ring" -- a bright margin of evaporate deposits -- which indicates that the sea was larger at some point in the past and has become smaller due to evaporation. The deposits are material left behind after the methane & ethane liquid evaporates, somewhat akin to the saline crust on a salt flat.

Keywords for this photo:

2014 - ASTRONOMY - CASSINI - FALSE COLOR - INFRARED - LAKE - METHANE - REFLECTION - SATELLITE - SATURN'S MOON - SUN - TITAN -