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Pasadena CA (SPX) Dec 27, 2005 With its thick, distended atmosphere, Titan's orange globe shines softly, encircled by a thin halo of purple light-scattering haze. Images taken using blue, green and red spectral filters were used to create this enhanced-color view; the color images were combined with an ultraviolet view that makes the high-altitude, detached layer of haze visible. The ultraviolet part of the composite image was given a purplish hue to match the bluish-purple color of the upper atmospheric haze seen in visible light. Small particles that populate high hazes in Titan's atmosphere scatter short wavelengths more efficiently than longer visible or infrared wavelengths, so the best possible observations of the detached layer are made in ultraviolet light. The images in this view were taken by the Cassini narrow-angle camera on May 5, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Titan and at a sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 137 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links Cassini at JPL Cassini Image Team SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express Explore The Ring World of Saturn and her moons Jupiter and its Moons The million outer planets of a star called Sol News Flash at Mercury
![]() ![]() The methane giving an orange hue to Saturn's giant moon Titan likely comes from geologic processes in its interior according to measurements from the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS), a Goddard Space Flight Center instrument aboard the European Space Agency's Huygens Probe. |
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