I guess it's never too early.

Titan-14 Science Highlights

Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (UVIS) – will probe haze optical properties, atmospheric nitrogen emissions and hydrocarbon absorption, and absorption by methane of the Lyman-alpha interplanetary background which helps us understand the distribution of methane in the thermosphere of Titan.

Radio Science Subsystem (RSS) - A T14 ingress/egress occultation of Titan will provide high spatial-resolution electron number density profile of the ionosphere, temperature-pressure and absorption profiles of the neutral atmosphere , as well as information about the small-scale structure of the atmosphere (gravity waves, turbulence, layers). An inbound and outbound RSS bistatic scattering observations of Titan's surface will provide information about the dielectric constant, nature, and roughness of the region probed.

Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) - will perform high spectral resolution studies of Titan's limb in the far-infrared regime unseen by Voyager, to search for new species and to map the vertical distribution of CO, CH4, HCN and H2O. CIRS will also continue existing campaigns of global temperature and composition mapping, extending spatial and temporal coverage.

Radio and Plasma Wave Spectrometer (RPWS) – Study the interaction of the magnetosphere with Titan at intermediate distances for evidence of ion pickup, radio emissions, density profiles, and the general wave environment.

At the rate you are going Alex, you will posting the T44 preview in a couple of weeks

Oh, I'll let T44 clear Aftermarket first

I thought T14 was going to include a SAR pass? Starting in southern Shangri-La, and heading east skirting southern Belet before dipping down and fizzing out before reaching Tsegihi.

Is this still the plan? I'm a certifiable SAR-junkie craving for a hit, so I certainly hope so

Cassini RADAR team member Ralph Lorenz put it best during the T11-T14 TOST Preview meeting: "T14 - nothing."

T14 is a bistatic pass, not a RADAR SAR pass. I think the tracks shown on the Cassini Cam page include both RADAR SAR and Bistatic passes and don't differentiate between the two.

For SAR junkies, the next SAR pass will take place on July 22 for T16. This pass comes very close to the north pole (swath reaches as far north as ~80N). All the passes from T16 through T19 have SAR. T17 (Sept. 7) is a half-SAR pass (only the time after, or before can't remember which, C/A has SAR), and covers western Fensal and northeast Xanadu. T18 (Sept. 23) is another half swath at north polar latitudes reaching as far north as ~67N. Finally, T19 (Oct. 9) will be another North polar pass (reaching as far north as 82N), overlapping the T16 swath in some areas.

Well, bistatic radar is not to be sneezed at in understanding the place.

http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v32n3/dps2000/121.htm


After a few of these passes, we should have a much better idea about how wet the sand is

Does this Bistatic-scattering create a image?

I would imagine that -- if they point the spacecraft's radar dish in an appropriate way -- analysis of the echoes of the radar pulses received on Earth for signal strength, timing and Doppler dispersion could allow us to break them down into at least a low-resolution imaging map, in just the same way that the spacecraft itself does so when it recieves its own radar echoes. Bistatic radar was used a number of times on Magellan, but I don't know how good the spatial resolution of the resultant echoes was.)

Some Venus bistatic data have been presented as maps... it's a long time since I looked at it, but I think it was Venera data - probably the earlier Venera orbiters - and in Cosmic Research or some such place. The coordinates given were hard to interpret, I seem to recall (E or W? N or S?). They only covered very small areas.

Phil

The first bistatic planetary radar observations, I believe, were by Mariner 6 and/or 7! A plot of the received spectrum of the signal as the spacecraft were going into (I think, don't know about exiting without digging in the "stacks" for a probable xerox of a paper in Icarus) occultation, shows the carrier frequency of the signal and a doppler shifted weak reflected signal that converged with the direct signal and disappeared at occultation. Viking orbiters did a few experimental bistatic passes too.

I believe plots exist of bistatic signals from the Pioneer Venus probes bouncing off the surface before impact. Not much signal, lots of noise, but "kewl"

T14 Flyby page is up!

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/prod...description.pdf

I'm looking forward to seeing images of Elba Facula.

When ESO took images of this part of titan it has always struck me as being a massive crater/basin. Since then there really doesnt seem to be much evidence for that.

Here's the image I'm am talking about.

Our best imaging of Elba Facula came in T11.

Got them all saved up.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...heQ=0&storedQ=0



Some pics Up!

This has indeed been a flyby concentrating on atmospheric observations.
Nevertheless, here's a sight you don't see every day:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...eiImageID=76196

Solar System Simulator view here
That would be Rhea being dwarfed by Titan's limb.

Gordan:

A slightly more familiar perspective - I wonder who'll claim to have been holding the camera *this* time?

Bob Shaw

Oh, I get my thumb on the lens all the time

[quote name='The Messenger' date='May 22 2006, 08:17 PM' post='55300']
Oh, I get my thumb on the lens all the time

Thumb is kind of old fashioned. I wonder how many ear's pictures are shot everyday with cellular phones

A false color view based on MT3+IP+Blue filters:

very pretty!

Ron Baalke has just sent out the latest Cassini status report, confirming that the T14 flyby was totally successful:

"A 'quick-look' analysis of the signal intensity profiles computed from the 1 KHz bandwidth recorded data indicate high quality S-, X-, and Ka-band ionospheric and atmospheric occultation data were acquired on both the ingress and egress sides. Signal frequency data was also collected and appears to be of equally good quality.

After a 'quick-look' analysis of the recorded 16 KHz bandwidth T14 data analyzed last night, the RSS Team is happy to report the successful detection of the first ever bistatic echo received from the surface of Titan. It is a whisper, as if Titan is trying to hold back on one more of its secrets, but is no doubt real, and is beautiful! The detection is, of course, the first step towards the goal of finding out what the echo tells us about the surface region probed."

The next Titan radio occultation won't be until T27.

They won't be trying to save the data from Titan 15 should an
outage occur during playback:

Monday, June 12 (DOY 163):

After examining the situation, Cassini scientists have agreed that an
attempt should not be made to recover science data from Titan 15 should an
outage occur during playback. The Mission and Science Planning teams
studied the specifics of the T15 high-value data recording and playback in
detail. The conclusion was that little high-value data recovery was
feasible via an after-the-fact response. The majority of the high-value data
will either be played back too late in a pass for a real-time response and
then overwritten shortly thereafter, or played back too early in a pass and
then overwritten too soon by real-time engineering and MAPS data.


And those of you in or near London should stop by and say Hi:

Many individuals from the Cassini science teams are out of town this week
for the MAPS workshop being held at Imperial College in London, England.
The workshop begins today and concludes on Friday, June 16.

Team meetings
for Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer, Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument,
and Magnetometer Subsystem will be held today and tomorrow. On Thursday
there will be a Titan workshop, and on Friday morning a workshop on
planetary rotation modulation phenomena, and in the afternoon, Saturn's
magnetosphere: plasma regions, boundaries, and transport.