This is my first post on a Titan thread.

The Bean shaped lake looks like it is sitting in a volcanic caldera.

I know it's only a 2d map on which deapth is very hard to infer, the area around the lake seems to be sloping away from it.

Roy

I'm not sure how useful this will be, but here's my attempt at combining the ISS and VIMS mosiacs of Titan:

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The original ISS image (thanks Steve!):

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The original VIMS from the JPL Photojournal (latitude and longitude lines removed):

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Ian.

I think the bean-shaped Ontario Lacus does in fact resemble the individual lobate extremities of the large northern lake as seen by ISS, both in size and apparent roundness.

Dear Steve, Alan, and Phil,

Wow! That's an awesome combination (of effort and images)!

Based on this combination of ISS and VIMS images, I speculatively identified additional "circular objects of interest" beyond those in this post.

Here are the newly tentatively identified "craterforms" drawn on the mosaic made by Steve (Circles drawn outside the tentative diameter of the craterform for clarity):

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What is also really cool about the combo of ISS and VIMS data is the huge amount of dark blue ice sand in the outer dark halo of Minrva. This would help support that connection between the dark blue ice sand halo and Minrva.

Wow!

-Mike

The word you are looking for is "playa"


tty

Playas are typically a bit drier than what I was imagining. The "desert" regions might equally be characterized as playa.

mudflats?

How about a "goo-flat"?

Methane rain bring down organic shizzle where it accumulates into masses/drifts/globs on the surface. Without a major flooding event it will sit and get coated in "bright material" or other atmospheric coatings.

Picture an on Earth full of shallow water like a flooded bayou. Then frogs lay oodles and oodles of humungous egg masses all over the place. As the water evaporates (or drains away) the gelatinous gooey egg masses are revealed on the surface. Imagine walking around with jiggling, gross, yukky masses forming a rough terrain as far as the eye can see.

I imagine the Titanian "goo-flat" would look like that.

(Slightly RADAR rough, ISS/VIMS would look like brighter material - definitely not dark blue ice sands nor dark brown dune sands)

[[Not a place for a romantic holiday]].

-Mike

P.S. Does anyone know what Death Valley (Badwater with the salt crystals) would look like by SAR? Would it appear roughish?

Funnily enough, Death Valley is shown on the Wikipedia page for SAR.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2...-valley-sar.jpg

Looks somewhat Huygens-like to me!

Amazing! It does look pretty similar!

It took a few twists and turns with Google Earth to realize that this is of the northern (dune) part of Death Valley.

Unfortunately, Badwater is just to the SSW from the lowest part of the image. I was wondering if the knobby little salt incrustations ('bout 10-20 inches across if I remember correct) of Devil's Golfcourse (near Badwater) would show up and similar to Cassini SAR of the Temperate zones.

So close....

-Mike

Highly variable, as it turns out (as the image posted shows).
Some of the very saline salt flats at Death Valley buckle on
scales larger than the radar wavelength and thus are very rough and hence bright ;
ditto the very rubbly Devils's Golfcourse or whatever it is called.
Then you have really flat things like Racetrack playa which acts like a mirror
(even more so when wet) and thus appears radar dark...

Greetings,

Thought I'd mention a slight cleanup on the Titan map that I've now posted at this URL:

http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/sos.html#TITAN

One can keep fiddling with this thing for quite a while...

Steve, isn't your map aligned in a different way other maps have been submitted? I can't overlay your map onto previous maps.

Cap-Team - this is hard for me to say. This should be the same as my previous iteration. It is centered on 180 degrees longitude and is a cylindrical equidistant projection if that helps you to overlay it.

I created a graphic showing currently available north polar RADAR swaths that dip partially into the Equatorial Sand Sea.
This is adapted from the graphic in Mitchell et al IOF 2007 Abstract 6042 "Titan's North Polar Lakes as Observed by Cassini RADAR: An Update." (Abstract freely NO LONGER available here. )

I've been using this to help make RADAR composites of Equatorial Sand Sea Basins:

Click to view attachment

-Mike

The Planetary Photojournal has release a new ISS Mosaic of Titan today! PIA08399.
Available at: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08399

I have taken all the Equatorial RADAR swath sections and overlaid them onto this new Mosaic:

Click to view attachment

Enjoy!

-Mike

Nice map. Mike.... thanks.

And we have your plots on the south polar projection....
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=102003
Will be very interesting to see what ALL the instruments reveal there.

Been reviewing the literature on clouds and hydrocarbon lakes and Titan climate models. What CHANGES will we see in the future....will comment later.

A world-view is slowly beginning to develop.

Craig

Juramike - post 115: go through LPI instead:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/icysat2007/pdf/6042.pdf

Phil

This is the new radar map of the north pole added to the new ISS map:

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and here's the northern hemisphere from that map in polar (equidistant azimuthal) projection.

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Phil

Great stuff, Phil!

I don't suppose there's a slightly less compressed version of the cylindrical map to be had?

Wow! Thanks, Phil!

That really fills in the northern terra incognita in the cylindrical projection! Nice to see it all being realized.

-Mike

Fantastic Phil....

Craig

Phil, it's really fantastic Thank you very much.

Hokay.... I tried to add the equatorial RADAR pieces over Phil Stooke's latest map to give a big RADAR composite on top of ISS images:

Click to view attachment

It sorta lines up, except in the mid-latitudes of the equatorial pieces (my fault, I have no idea how to warp and adapt the equatorial swaths to cylindrical projection in the higher latitudes.)

At least it might help some future mapping goo-roo line it all up for real. (Phil? ExploitCorporations? Scalbers? Somebody heeeelp?)

-Mike

I'd love to see Phil's map in a proper Mercator projection -- those northern lakes would look HUGE.

Here is the simple cylindrical map with reprojected versions of all the SAR swaths between Ta and T21 except the HiSAR stuff and T18 (will try to add that soon):

Beautiful!

Thanks, VP!

-Mike

You're the man, VP.

--Emily

Thanks VP!!!!

Is this release of the ISS Titan map part of your work?

I was just using this map to enlighten an office mate!!!!! Exploring a world by investigating the different equatorial albedo regions. Then the serendipty of the north polar passes (I know that main reason was to crank the inclination for CASSINI).
Soon we will have more RADAR over the south pole.

Those radar noodles across the surface and the refined imaging data really serve to illustrate that method. Fuzzy features slowly come into focus. The slow pealing away of mystery to reveal details with even more mystery.

Neat thing would be to have a movie showing the early Keck maps and then slowly overlaying the different CASSINI map versions (including each RADAR noodle as it occurred) until we see the current state. That would be a neat educational tool.

Any of you image gurus game for that?

Thanks to the CASINI team and all you UMSF folks!!!!!

Just Glorious!!!!

Craig

... and another version. Here I've taken VP's latest map and combined it with mine to link the radar strips. Then I did a bit of contrast modification. Less compressed, for ugordan.

Phil


Click to view attachment

Outstanding, thanks a lot Phil. That's a keeper!

Nice map

I'd love to see the movie someone described of morphing HST-Keck-etc-Cassini as our
knowledge improves. Could even start with the two-spot model fit to the near-IR lightcurve
in the early 90s

I notice on this map at the extreme left, just above the bunny rabbit, some vaguely
N-S striations (dunes) that I hadnt seen before and seem to be orthogonal to the
more typical orientation. Are these real or are they some sort of ISS artifact ?

"I notice on this map at the extreme left, just above the bunny rabbit, some vaguely
N-S striations (dunes) that I hadnt seen before and seem to be orthogonal to the
more typical orientation. Are these real or are they some sort of ISS artifact ?"


Heh heh! Good one, Ralph...

Phil

Er... isn't he being serious? I certainly think I see what he's talking about (including the "bunny rabbit", a bright two-eared formation that seems to be jogging along briskly to the west.) There's a rather large north-south dune field surrounding the Martha's Vineyard-shaped island with the big crater up around Tisbury. Doubtless I'm being dense and not seeing the joke -- unless this is just an in-joke between Ralph and Phil, in which case I won't be embarrassed.

I think Phil is picking up on my possibly unfair skepticism : if it's not Scottish, it's crap. Same for
RADAR.

Ralphocentric view is - orientation of features is contrary to expectation , could it be an
artifact? If so, it is then an ISS artifact.

If it is real, it would be very interesting.

Well, the more northerly of that set of ISS images overlaps with a radar swath, so you could compare them. I'm having no luck finding a more detailed version of that swath, though -- I expect that won't be a problem for you.

The more northerly set of images is part of the T16 RADAR Swath (the leftmost section) which has been released as PIA09112 (available here). The right end of this swath is the section that drops down into Aaru basin. Here is a graphic which shows where T16 ends up in relation to the ISS "verticle lines".

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There is a "secret swath" that passes much closer to the Playboy peninsula and also overlaps with some of the Ta RADAR swath. Unfortunately, this has not yet been released. [I'm drooling with anticipation since this might've come close to a cool-o interesting multi-ring feature].

-Mike

Duh - sorry, Ralph. I thought you were making a joke about the n-s trending straight lines at the top of the map... reprojected grid lines. I should never have doubted you. I never will again... well, not very often.

Phil

Thanks, Mike! That certainly does make it look like the seeming N-S dune field is artifactual -- there are real dunes in there, but they're going W-E. I'll certainly look forward to further radar swaths in this region.

Ralph, those are artifacts. The original CB3 images (or MT1 images, I can't recall at the moment) were taken in 8-bit mode in that area, so you see some effects from the dithering. And regarding the implication that if it isn't RADAR, it's cr@p, I'm telling!!!

BTW, here is the updated map with all RADAR SAR swaths in the PDS at the moment (including all the HiSAR stuff).

VP...

Right now, you rule, man!!!!!

Even if I am more partial to the detail in the SAR...

Craig

OK, I've [almost] given up.

Does anyone have any idea where the T19 Distant targeted look fits in?

I've been struggling to fit this in and just haven't been able make it work.

-Mike

Thanks VP - I figured that was the case. I guess a partial retraction is in order -
IF you take out the artifacts, and IF you somehow know whether a dark splot is
a sand sea or a methane lake, THEN the imaging is really pretty interesting .....

That's what my divining rod is for.

Speaking of dark splots...the new mosaic shows a really nice dark splot down in S Senkyo basin.

Could this be an artifact or a Senkyo version of Omacatl Macula?
(It seemed to be present on the older maps as well, the newer mosaic brings out the contrast).

-Mike

[EDIT: Feature indicated]:

Click to view attachment

That little spot is one of my favorite little areas. Not sure what it is. It isn't an artifact, it has been seen in a number of mosaics covering this region. One possibility is that it could be a buried impact crater. In this area, it would appear we have bright material partly covered in dunes, but we have this circular feature that is much darker than the surrounding terrain. Perhaps this is an impact crater that has been subsequently filled in with sediment, then covered in dunes. Another possibility is that it is similar to Omacatl, a cryovolcano with an ashfall deposit, but this really doesn't have the same, parabolic shape that Omacatl and Elpis have.

The parabolic inky black shape of Omacatl and Elpis Macula(e?) would be due to the prevailing winds causing the cryoashfall drift.

But the wind strength varies as Titan moves around in it's orbit, if the General Circulation Models are correct.

So...maybe the S Senkyo splot [name needed here] was a single-shot deal done during a calm-wind period. That would give it a nice regular circular diffusion to the fallout pattern rather than a downwind parabola.

Any chance this feature was imaged in the "secret unreleased RADAR swath"?

-Mike

I doubt that. Winds can vary, but I doubt there would dead calm for the duration or an eruption or eruptions, particularly at the altitude of the top of the eruption column.

Okay, I'll bite. What secret, unreleased SAR swath? T23?

Yup. T23 (Jan 13, 2007) RADAR Swath.

I'm hoping they release it soon.....

The few images they've released (Ganesa Macula, half-crater image) are teasingly cool-o....

-Mike

Some new images of Titan were taken on October 22. They cover the lowest resolution area on the latest Titan maps.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...iImageID=130136