Cool Cassini Images

Looking akin to a picture of an Earthly sunrise, with those subtle shades of dusky orange, pale blue and sea green, this image actually portrays a much more extraterrestrial location, showing as it does the thick atmosphere surrounding Titan, the biggest of the moons of Saturn.

Created in mid-December by combining raw images acquired by the Cassini probe into one stunning shot approximating the supposed true colors as human eyes might perceive them. With an atmosphere that is 10 X as high as that of Earth, which from a distance is visible as a pale ring around – indigo in hue – surrounding Titan.

Seemingly thicker at the poles, especially the north pole, this unusual feature has been dubbed the polar hood. This strange atmosphere is composed of complex hydrocarbons, resulting from the breaking down of methane in the  atmosphere by sunlight. Visible dark features on the surface of Titan are massive swathes of vast dunes, hundreds of feet high, covering an area as big as the USA and also made of hydrocarbons.

At 3,200 miles (5,150 km) across it is even larger than the planet Mercury, and unlike any other moon in our solar system it is covered by a thick, complex atmosphere composed of methane and hydrocarbons. In fact, Titan’s atmosphere is up to ten times thicker than Earth’s, and Titan is the second-largest moon in the solar system (Jupiter’s Ganymede is the first) but the only moon known to possess a substantial atmosphere.

Titan’s frigid yet remarkably Earth-like surface features rivers and lakes of liquid methane, dune-filled plains, mountains, valleys, and lakes and … and it may even have an ocean under the surface. The images following are of the moon Tethys passing behind Titan as seen from Atmosphere, Wonder.

The two moons are about I million miles apart as they orbit the giant planet, and Tethys is far smaller, only 660 miles across while Titan is five times bigger at 3200 miles. Also, Titan has a very nitrogen-rich,  - thick atmosphere-one of only two bodies, alongside Earth –  within in the solar system having stable bodies of liquid water on the surface, whilst Tethys is completely frozen -primarily of water ice – with no atmosphere that can be measured.

Strangely enough, the huge, 250 mile crater on the surface makes Tethys a dead ringer for the Death Star of Star-wars fame, but this one definitely is not manned. These glorious pictures just go to show how diverse and wondrous the solar system truly is.