CICLOPS Looking Ahead has information on the upcoming Titan flyby:
http://ciclops.org/view/5142/Rev_78

T45 Mission Description now available:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/prod...description.pdf

The T45 mission discription is now up on the Cassini-Huygens home page! http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
ZaZooks!!! Looks like Mike has scooped me on this one!! His link is the the actual pdf file of the T45 mission; the above takes one to the home page so I'll leave this post up as its not completely redundant!!

Mike is the Chuck Norris of Titan. You do not, ever, scoop Mike; Mike scoops you!!!

(For those of you who may not be familiar, Chuck Norris is an iconic karate film and TV star here in the States, and there's a recent Internet fad about him. Visit http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com for a host of Norris 'facts'. Warning: Some are at least PG, but a lot are pretty funny!)

Will be of great interest to see if the 2hr before closest approach ISS show cloud bands just east of Hotei Arcus as was present in the T44 flyby (check the raw images on Friday or Saturday of this week). If so would make one wonder if Hotei Arcus is generating the clouds (via orographic lift or even via local methane atmospheric enrichment if indeed Hotei is an active cryovolcano).

No imaging of Hotei is planned at 2 hours before closest approach. This is a gravity pass.

And orogenic clouds... if someone can prove to me that orogenic clouds ACTUALLY exist on Titan, I will eat an entire tofu turkey.


Clouds on Titan - OOOOOOOOOOOO






Mountains on Titan - /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\

Thanks! I stand corrected! Here's one for you ...

/ \

Hmmm. Looks like they cut the imaging budget some for the extended mission.

--Greg :-)

My impression was more like...

I see the Titan RAW images have begun to arrive!

Rough mosaic of inbound images (?) from the T45 Flyby. I tried to line up the "surface" features.

Click to view attachment

I think that might be Hotei Arcus/Xanadu at center near the terminator.

-Mike

The T45 inbound Titan map 2hrs before closest approach from the mission description is shown in 1) below. Hotei arcus is in range of both the WAC and NAC
The solar system sim for the same epoch is shown in 2).
As the terminator is to the right on the early images posted above these likely are inbound photos.

1)

2) Click to view attachment

Once again, no Titan images were planned for 2 hours before closest approach. The closest before closest approach were taken 12 hours before C/A, not 2 hours. The mosaic Juramike posted is from that MONITORNA001 observation.

The flyby description document just shows example views of Titan at various intervals during the flyby, but do not represent that are actually in those instrument fields of view.

Thanks again for the explanation! My main point was to say these were inbound photos as Mike had a ? about that in his post.