January 15, 2005

Postcards from Titan

Huygens has safely landed on Titan, and it appears to have hit solid ground. The fully functional probe was busy collecting data for more than four hours, living longer than expected. Cassini relayed the first images of Titan's surface. I'm telling you, it's like a whole 'nother world over there.
One image was captured during the probe's decent, at an altitude of 16.2 km (10 miles) above the surface. The image shows land with liquid streams leading to a coastline. The image's resolution is 40 m per pixel. When I enlarged the image and examined the pixels, it seemed to me that the streams are 50 - 150 m wide. We don't know what's in them, but it surely isn't water, because the temperature is a frosty -180 degrees C. This image shows the flat and lumpy landing site. More details and images are available from the European Space Agency. Link.

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