Image: PIA17179 Titan seas

Description: Using a special spectral filter, the high-resolution camera aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft was able to peer through the hazy atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. It captured this image, which features the largest seas and some of the many hydrocarbon lakes that are present on Titan's surface. Titan is the only place in the solar system, other than Earth, that has stable liquids on its surface. In this case, the liquid consists of ethane and methane rather than water. An annotated version of the image indicates the names assigned to the visible features. Titan's largest sea is Kraken Mare. For more information on Titan's hydrocarbon lakes see PIA17472 and PIA17473. This view looks towards the side of Titan (3,200 miles or 5,150 kilometers across) that leads in its orbit around Saturn. North on Titan is up and rotated 36 degrees to the left. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural-color view. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 7, 2013. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 809,000 miles (1.303 million kilometers) from Titan. Image scale is 5 miles (8 kilometers) per pixel. The Cassini Solstice Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini Solstice Mission visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The original NASA image has been modified by cropping and conversion from TIF to JPEG format. Some of the features in this image have been annotated in Wikimedia Commons.
Title: PIA17179 Titan seas
Credit: http://www.ciclops.org/view/7768/Lakes-Through-the-Haze
Author: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No