* Astronomy

The dark, equatorial region known as Shangri-la is visible here. Cassini radar images show that Shangri-la and other dark regions around the moon's middle are filled with vast stretches of parallel dunes. These regions appear to be lowland areas surrounded by brighter, higher terrain.


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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/University of Colorado

Lit terrain seen here is on the anti-Saturn side of Titan. North is up and rotated 21 degrees to the right.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 19, 2007 using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light centred at 746 and 938 nanometers.
The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometres from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 80 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometres per pixel.

This image of Titan was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on October 22, 2007, when it was approximately 516,699 kilometres away.


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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/University of Colorado

The image was taken using the CL1 and CB3 filters.

-- Edited by Blobrana at 21:37, 2007-10-24

"Titan is indeed the land of lakes and seas. It will be interesting to see the differences between the north and south polar regions" -  Rosaly Lopes, Cassini radar scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

 It is now summer at Titan's south pole. A season on Titan lasts nearly 7.5 years, one quarter of a Saturn year, which is 29.5 years long. Monitoring seasonal changes in the lakes will help scientists understand the processes at work there.

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Cassini's radar instrument finds lakes in the southern hemisphere of Titan during the most recent Titan flyby. This is the first confirmation of lakes in the southern hemisphere with the radar instrument. Hundreds of lakes have already been discovered and imaged by radar at Titan's north pole. This finding is important to scientists who are trying to understand how Titan's environment works.
Cassini completed its 37th flyby of Saturn's moon Titan on Oct. 2, 2007, allowing the Cassini Titan Radar Mapper to obtain this southernmost image to date.


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Credit:    NASA/JPL/USGS

Shown here is a portion of the image swath and an inset with details of a small portion in false colour. Titan's south pole is at the bottom centre. The nature and similarities between the northern and southern near-polar regions supports the idea that much of Titan's poles are climate-driven.
A few small dark patches - liquid-hydrocarbon-filled lakes - stand out, at about 70 degrees south, and are highlighted in the insert (lakes are coloured blue). Other features in the scene include broad, steep-sided depressions adjoined to sinuous depressions, interpreted to be empty topographic basins or drained lakes fed by channels, and complex mottled terrain, akin to those at similar northern latitudes. Similarities in features between northern and southern hemispheres imply that the climatic conditions are also similar.
The image shown here is a 1.4-kilometer  resolution, 2,250-kilometer  subsection of a 4,500-kilometer  long swath, which is 150 kilometres  wide at the narrowest point. The insert is 90 by 90 kilometres, centred at 70.5 degrees south and 113.9 degrees west. Future southern flybys will image closer to the pole and are expected to show more lakes.