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TOPIC: Titan
Blobrana


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Titan T40
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Almost sixteen days after Cassinis Titan-39 flyby, the spacecraft revisits Saturns largest moon for the Cassini missions forty-first targeted encounter with Titan.
The closest approach to Titan occurs on Saturday, Jan. 5, at 2008-005T21:30:20 spacecraft time at an altitude of 1010 kilometres  above the surface and at a speed of 6.3 kilometres per second. The latitude at closest approach is 12 degrees S and the encounter occurs on orbit number 55.
This encounter is set up with two manoeuvres: an apoapsis manoeuvre on December 29 (since cancelled), and a Titan approach manoeuvre, scheduled for January 2. T40 is the fifth in a series of outbound encounters that will last until the end of the prime mission, and occurs less than two days after Saturn closest approach. This is the fifth in a series of seven Titan southern hemisphere encounters

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Blobrana


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RE: Titan
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This image of Titan and the large, equatorial bright region at centre called Adiri was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Nov. 19, 2007 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centred at 939 nanometers.
The Huygens probe landing site is northwest of Adiri.
The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 115,000 kilometres from Titan.
Image scale is 7 kilometres per pixel.

titanov1907
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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute


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Blobrana


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This image of Titan was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on December 21, 2007, when it was approximately 233,989 kilometres away.

titane7
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Credit NASA

The image was taken using the CL1 and CB3 filters.

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Blobrana


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This image of Titan was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on December 21, 2007, when it was approximately 238,337 kilometres away.

titange6
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Credit NASA

The image was taken using the CL1 and CB3 filters.


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Blobrana


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This image of Titan was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on December 21, 2007, when it was approximately 255,932 kilometres away.

titan_e5
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Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The image was taken using the CL1 and CB3 filters.

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Blobrana


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This image of Titan was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on December 21, 2007, when it was approximately 235,517 kilometres away.

titane2
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Credit NASA

The image was taken using the CB3 and CL2 filters.

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Blobrana


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RE: Titan mountains
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By analysing images from NASAs Cassini Radar instrument, a Brigham Young University professor helped discover and analyse mountains on Saturns largest moon, additional evidence that it has some of the most earthlike processes of any celestial body in the solar system.
Planetary scientist Jani Radebaugh is lead author of the discovery paper in the December issue of the astronomy journal Icarus. The images retrieved by the Cassini Radar are the first images showing the details of Titans surface previous spacecraft and telescopes could not pierce the haze and clouds surrounding the moon to the surface.
The discovery of mountains on Titan grew out of Radebaughs collaboration with a research team that recently found sand dunes and methane lakes on Titan. Radebaugh was a co-author on the Science magazine study that introduced Titans sand dunes in May 2006 as well as the Nature study that introduced Titans methane lakes in January 2007.

m-Titan0712-22043.jpg
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BYU professor Jani Radebaugh stands next to three images of Titan taken by the Cassini spacecraft. The image on the far left is what Titan would look like to the human eye; the middle image was taken at infrared wavelength and filters out atmospheric haze to show surface features; the image on the right is a composite showing both surface and atmospheric features.
According to the study, Titans mountains are most likely made of water ice and are relatively small in height, at most 2 km (1.25 mi) from base to peak. Thats about half as tall as Mount Timpanogos near BYUs campus. The consistently short height of Titans mountains provides evidence that they have been subject to similar amounts of erosion, that they are roughly the same age or that the materials are behaving in a way that prevents them from growing taller.

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Blobrana


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RE: Titan
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Title: The 2003 Nov 14 occultation by Titan of TYC 1343-1865-1. II. Analysis of light curves
Authors: A. Zalucha, A. Fitzsimmons, J. L. Elliot, J. Thomas-Osip, H. B. Hammel, V. S. Dhillon, T. R. Marsh, F. W. Taylor, P. G. J. Irwin

We observed a stellar occultation by Titan on 2003 November 14 from La Palma Observatory using ULTRACAM with three Sloan filters: u', g', and i' (358, 487, and 758 nm, respectively). The occultation probed latitudes 2 degrees S and 1 degrees N during immersion and emersion, respectively. A prominent central flash was present in only the i' filter, indicating wavelength-dependent atmospheric extinction. We inverted the light curves to obtain six lower-limit temperature profiles between 335 and 485 km (0.04 and 0.003 mb) altitude. The i' profiles agreed with the temperature measured by the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument [Fulchignoni, M. et al., 2005. Nature 438, 785-791] above 415 km (0.01 mb). The profiles obtained from different wavelength filters systematically diverge as altitude decreases, which implies significant extinction in the light curves. Applying an extinction model [Elliot, J.L., Young, L.A., 1992. Astron. J. 103, 991-1015] gave the altitudes of line of sight optical depth equal to unity: 396 ± 7 km and 401 ± 20 km (u' immersion and emersion); 354 ± 7 km and 387 ± 7 km (g' immersion and emersion); and 336 ± 5 km and 318 ± 4 km (i' immersion and emersion). Further analysis showed that the optical depth follows a power law in wavelength with index 1.3 ± 0.2. We present a new method for determining temperature from scintillation spikes in the occulting body's atmosphere. Temperatures derived with this method are equal to or warmer than those measured by the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument. Using the highly structured, three-peaked central flash, we confirmed the shape of Titan's middle atmosphere using a model originally derived for a previous Titan occultation [Hubbard, W.B. et al., 1993. Astron. Astrophys. 269, 541-563].

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Blobrana


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TITAN 053TI(T38)
MISSION DESCRIPTION
Sixteen days after Cassinis Titan-37 flyby, the spacecraft revisits Titan for its thirty-ninth targeted encounter. The closest approach to Titan occurs on Tuesday, December 4, at 2007-339T00:06:50 spacecraft time at an altitude of 1,300 kilometres (~807 miles) above the surface and at a speed of 6.3 kilometres per second (14,000 mph). The latitude at closest approach is 79 degrees S and the encounter occurs on orbit number 53.
This encounter is set up with two manoeuvres: an apoapsis manoeuvre on November 26, and a Titan approach manoeuvre, scheduled for December 2. T38 is the third in a series of outbound encounters that will last until the end of the prime mission, and occurs less than two days after Saturn closest approach. This is the third in a series of seven Titan southern hemisphere encounters.

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Blobrana


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This image of Titan was taken by the Cassni spaceprobe on November 19, 2007, when the moon was approximately 76,394 kilometres away.

tita_ge7
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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The image was taken using the CB3 and CL2 filters.

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