Posted on 07/19/2018 3:12:20 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Cassini team members created the six-image set using data collected over 13 years by the Saturn-orbiting probe's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS). As its name suggests, VIMS deals in long-wavelength infrared light, allowing the instrument to see through the thick Titanic haze that obscures visible-light views of the moon's frigid surface.
But the new mosaics are pretty much seamless — a breakthrough made possible by a reanalysis of the VIMS data and laborious hand processing of the resulting mosaics, mission team members said.
"With the seams now gone, this new collection of images is by far the best representation of how the globe of Titan might appear to the casual observer if it weren't for the moon's hazy atmosphere, and it likely will not be superseded for some time to come," NASA officials wrote in a statement Wednesday (July 18).
Indeed, the photos give viewers a new appreciation for Titan's complex and varied surface, which boasts dunes of carbon-containing organic compounds, icy deposits and vast seas of liquid hydrocarbons. (Titan is the only extraterrestrial object known to harbor stable bodies of liquid on its surface.)
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
These mosaics of the Saturn moon Titan's surface were constructed using data gathered over 13 years by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer instrument aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Nantes/University of Arizona
It makes our moon look pretty boring.
Looks like a moldy orange.
Thanks BenLurkin.
Yes.
Yes, it does.
Who can fathom what new penicillins this moldy orange offers?
Titan is an interesting moon (or planet). Titan has seas of methane (and ethane). Ethane is flamable and natural gas is 95.2% methane. The second largest component of natural gas is ethane (then propane).
I suppose since natural gas (and its liquid for petroleum) are fossil fuels, there must be lots of dead dinos on Titan. /sarc
Methane and natural gas are created in the mantle.
Darned big Moldy Orange, also finding mold on it’s surface would be an amazing discovery
Pretty awesome. I saw on the news crawl yesterday that they just found a few more moons of Jupiter. There’s dozens of them, and when I was in school there were just 5 or so IIRC
They look like the jaw breakers I used to buy when I was a kid.......
Awesome. See? I was right!
Heck, half of it’s still good..
Stunning details!
Titan is 3200 miles in diameter, versus earth’s 8000 miles. So it is not a small object in our solar system for sure.
I guess nobody better light a match near it.
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