The T25 flyby page is now online; however, so far as I can tell, the mission description document isn't available publicly yet.

from the brief description of the SAR observation on the website, it seems like a very useful observation that will give different incidence angles to already observed terrain. Some useful science will come from that hopefully!

How much of an elevation difference will the different viewing angle be able to detect?

(Will we get an idea if the ring around the lakes is flat or a 10 meter cliff?)

-Mike

According to abstract "First stereoscopic radar images of Titan" the heights of scarps around some lakes are up to 600 m!

ftp://ftp.lpi.usra.edu/pub/outgoing/lpsc2007/full303.pdf
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2007/....download.shtml

600 m! Wow! Not much of a beach for surfing Titan.

If this is a general trend, this will make it difficult to spot seasonal differences as lake levels change.

I would expect to mostly see visibility of features around lake margins change, rather than any obvious relief changes due to the possible fluid height variations. If we're seeing stuff "under the water" near the lake margins, they'll get more visible as the methane-ethane level drops.

The mission description is now online (900 Kb PDF).

Cool! So we can expect an updated Titan map around 2010, right VP?

They will try to extend the SAR observations to have a look at Hotei Arcus.
Could be quite interesting.
I heard about several high altitude SAR observations (especially over Tortola) but never found any picture or other informations.
What about it ?
Marc.

IIRC, someone recently mentioned the last attempt to do high altitude SAR didn't pan out.

The T12 HiSAR pass didn't pan out, that's correct, but several others have, such as a passes over the Huygens landing site, Tortola Facula, and western Xanadu. Since the RADAR team seems to be releasing products 5 months after they were taken, I would imagine that the Tortola Facula stuff is due sometime late next month, if they plan on also releasing HiSAR products (yes, I rolled my eyes too when I heard that they called their high altitude SAR products HiSAR ). But that's only because I am innundated with HiNames all day, every day.

For more information on this flyby and other events during Rev39, check out the new Upcoming Events section of the CICLOPS website:

http://ciclops.org/news/looking_ahead.php

Here is the link to the Rev39 page:

http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=2592

Nice!

first images are up
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...iImageID=103890

Hey, there's Belet!

The first thing I see -- or don't see -- is any detail at all in the higher northern latitudes, in what has to be by definition our best look yet at them.

The "shorelines" here seem to have at least as much dune-wispy blurring as we've seen anywhere else.

some structure in the northern haze/cloud(?):
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...8/W00025814.jpg

some pretty bright patches here:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...8/W00025800.jpg

almost reminds me of specular reflections, only the geometry seems slightly off. In any case, it reminded me of the Rosetta image of Earth:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6375717.stm

Yeah, I see it too...looks like banding. Amazing how much it looks like a little version of Saturn in this view. Maybe Titan is the one and only "gas midget" in the Solar System!

Oh god, don't give the IAU naming committee ideas...!!!!

...curses! Stu has discovered my evil plan!!!

It is kind of interesting, though, that of all the moons & planets only Titan & Saturn bear even a vague visual similarity to each other. Of course, that's an entirely subjective and superficial impression that quickly breaks down upon any deeper examination. It'll be interesting to see how much Pluto & Charon resemble each other, given that they're likely to be much more similar in most ways.

Of all the moons and planets, only Titan has a dense atmosphere so both it and Saturn are bound to look more similar to one another especially due to haze layers both bodies exhibit.
Pluto and Charon might actually turn out quite different to each other, they have a different color and atmospheric properties.

Titan, Venus, and Uranus are all in the "Go home, folks, there's nothing to see here" category in visible light. For some of my rank-amateur space art, I used a brightness map of a gibbous Titan as a mask to overlay on projections of other worlds to make a gibbous version of them.

I think it's a noteworthy point in the history of science that these blank worlds can so come to life in other spectral bands -- none of them is blank if you pick the right filter. Fortunately. In principle, the solar system could have handed us a major world that was blank in every band.

Saturn and Neptune are relatively bland themselves. Maybe with a Great Dark Spot on hiatus, Neptune is blander yet.

A quick stitch of the new territory
Click to view attachment

Here's my version of the Titan clouds.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Nice, Phil! All it's missing are a couple of cyclonic storms and the rings, of course... ...still amazed by the banding & consequent resemblance to its primary in this view.

EDIT: Okay, here's my very first foray into imagery manipulation. It isn't very good, so please be kind..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26478279@N00/402230475

BTW, how do you make thumbnails on the board?

First attempts at playing with Titan jpegs. Ouch:

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Nice work, Orion!

All...

note this CASSINI raw image....... there are dark features up at the northern terminator line. These look like new terrain features coming into view.......

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...8/N00078895.jpg

Craig

Wow. Anyone more skilled at cartography might be able to tell if these polar features have any longitudinal correlation with the big lakes visible in the T19 swath:

Click to view attachment

A first look at this problem suggests there is a possible correlation.

This map is a composite of the ISS map released at the end of 2006 - northern hemisphere reprojected into a polar azimuthal equidistant projection - and the latest picture just posted above - very approximate alignment only. Zero long. is at the top - the straight line. When the north pole map posted in a previous thread is overlaid on it - not shown here - the big lakes with fjord-like coasts align roughly with the dark shape seen in ISS. I'm surprised to see details so close to the terminator, but it's a good sign.

Phil

Click to view attachment

According to:

http://cassinicam.com/titanflybys/titantracks.html

... the RADAR tracks north of Belet will be T28 and T31, both still pending.

The ISS "lake" features in this image would be at about 280W, 60N. And they're very exciting. They are only now coming into spring daylight, and look like they might be some pretty big lakes fed by a long winter's rain.

I finished this composite just before I read your post JRehling, so my guesstimates are off. Thanks for the coordinates. This must be a pretty massive "lake". Thrilling news about the potential for RADAR coverage!

Click to view attachment


EDIT: Jeez, Phil, I totally missed yours too! Thanks!

Using Phil Stooke's rough polar projection(and suggestion) and the equally rough 70N+ radar composite, this is my unSWAG as to the correlation, assuming one exists. The positions of objects in this map may actually only be accurate in another solar system.

Click to view attachment

WOW!

Really interesting !
This could be a good candidate for the biggest lake "identified" yet on Titan.
Even if the resolution is yery low, they are also numerous smaller candidates.
Will VIMS try a high resolution observation of this region ?
Marc.

Looking at Exploit's views of the pole and associated map......

.....I'm wondering where giant polar ring cloud is. I see one little (relatively speaking) linear left-right cloud or something that looks like a cloud just to the right of a down-pointing finger of the possible giant lake... (down being toward 6:00 clock angle on the image), but no trace of circum-polar features.

I have the impression that the filter at this wavelength "sees through" the polar ring clouds, and the linear cloud (deeper? denser?) visible in the image is opaque at this window of the spectrum. Not sure of the how and why. Anybody know what Cassini's filter sensitivities do in regards to cloud composition and/or density?

The image belleraphon1 originally linked to was taken using the CB3 filter that's a filter covering part of the spectrum where methane is not absorbing. In the MT2 filter which is the methane absorption filter the linear cloud is not visible suggesting it's a low altitude feature. For info on various filters and scientific reasonings I suggest the definitive writeup on the ISS subsytem by Porco et. al. Page 86 in particular has a nice graph showing each filter transmissivity and a sample of Titan's spectrum.

As for the huge polar cloud, it's very likely the 12->8 bit conversion along with jpeg artifacts drown out the weak S/N ratio needed to make out the cloud. Alternatively, that linear cloud might in fact be the same huge cloud made visible only because it's an incredibly dense segment of the cloud and so made visible even in the see-thru-methane filter.

ed - you mean the polar cloud vims imaged?
( http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=3849 )
although there is lots of ring-like structure, I was under the impression it covered the entire north polar region above 60N.
If so I think it is quite high and so the ISS windows may not be very sensitive to it.

edit - i forgot to say good work to everyone. very cool stuff! this place rules :-)

All...

I posted the original notice regarding the near polar terrain features right before I hit the sack here in Ohio
USA.... glad to see all the wonderful work you folks have done with this since.

Very exciting!!!! Are these lakes?

I too was also wondering about the polar cloud seen by VIMS but not evidenced in this ISS raw. It "looked" so opaque in the VIMS release. Any one see a sign of this feature in the other raws, or are the circumpolar features seen with ISS the link to this VIMS cloud?

Again, you folks do great work.

Craig

my guess is that you see it in images like these:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...8/W00025814.jpg
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...8/N00078880.jpg

but can't be sure

I'm not sure that's the cloud VIMS detected. That's just the complex haze structure over the north pole with several detached layers. It being readily visible in violet and ultraviolet frames is a tell-tale sign that its a very high, stratospheric phenomenon.

See here and here.

exactly!

edit - that would explain why it isn't visible in the iss windows. Just wonder why it shows up in the VIMS image (if these are all window region that are plotted), but the cloud may just be strongly affecting some of the NIR window regions (5 um mostly by the reddish color of the plot).

had another quick browse: does anyone else find this line around a latitude slightly unusual??
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...8/N00078894.jpg
or is this an artifact?

Titan is has a darker band that shifts as the seasons change and goes from the equator to one of the poles. Without knowing which filter this was (it would be more helpful to post a link to the overview page, not the full image itself) I'd say this is real and a combination of that band boundary and limb effects. Polarizing filters can also do weird things to limb appearances.

sorry about that

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...iImageID=104045

it does like a polar collar, but it doesn't show up much in other images.

PIA09180: Titan: Larger and Larger Lakes

Great !
I have the feeling hat the resolution of the SAR observation gets better with time !
Is the dark region south of the "island" really filled with liquid ? If its the case, it should not be really deep.

and look at the beautiful rivers! Rivers on a place outside Earth still boggles the mind. Especially if they're made out of methane

Looking at the new RADAR image and then coming back to the wide-angle image with dark shapes located very high up north, I'm starting to believe that's really a huge system of lakes coming into sunlight and that we're actually starting to see them in visible wavelengths as well. Interesting times!