Polar Clouds on Titan

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute , Posted on: Thursday, 7 August 2008, 06:11 CDT Download full size image

Frigid Titan continues to prove itself a remarkably complex and dynamic world. Here, bright clouds are seen encircling the moon's north polar region.

The Cassini spacecraft has revealed the presence of great lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons on this part of Titan's surface. An extended, high-altitude haze hovers above the limb of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) at top of the image.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 26, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 786,000 kilometers (488,000 miles) from Titan. Image scale is 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.

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