CANADA: Cassini has sent across fresh images of Saturn’s Prometheus and Titan revealing the surface features of the two moons in greater detail.
Cassini took a series of images of Titan during its “T-114” flyby on November 13, 2015 using its visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) instrument. The blue represents wavelengths centered at 1.3 microns, green represents 2.0 microns, and red represents 5.0 microns, NASA says. If Cassini would have imaged Titan at visible wavelengths (centered around 0.5 microns), it would have shown only Titan’s hazy atmosphere. However, the near-infrared wavelengths has allowed Cassini’s vision to penetrate the haze and reveal the moon’s surface.
The image shown above is a composite where you would see several places as being visible in higher resolution than elsewhere. Cassini acquired images of these areas, called subframes, near closest approach and that’s the reason they have finer resolution, but cover smaller areas than data obtained when Cassini was farther away from Titan.
During this Titan flyby, the spacecraft’s closest-approach altitude was 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometers), which is considerably higher than those of typical flybys, which are around 750 miles (1,200 kilometers). The high flyby allowed VIMS to gather moderate-resolution views over wide areas (typically at a few kilometers per pixel).
NASA has also released one of the best shots of Saturn’s Prometheus as captured by its Cassini spacecraft from a distance of approximately 23,000 miles. The latest image [main article image] was captured by Cassini in visible light through the narrow-angle camera during a moderately close flyby on December 6, 2015 showing off the pockmarked surface of Prometheus. the view shows off the moon as is visible on the anti-Saturn side.
