During its Sept. 7, 2005, flyby of Titan, Cassini acquired images of
territory on the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere that were assembled to
create this mosaic.
Once known only as "the H" because the region looks something like the
letter on its side, features in this region now possess provisional names
assigned by the International Astronomical Union (see:
http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/). The northern branch of the H is now
called "Fensal," while the southern branch is known as "Aztlan."
Fensal is littered with small "islands" ranging in size from 5 to 40
kilometers (3 to 25 miles) across. These landforms currently are thought
to be water ice upland areas, surrounded by shallower terrain that is
filled-in with dark particulate material from the atmosphere. A few larger
islands are also seen, like Bazaruto Facula (near right, containing a dark
crater), and several islands in western Fensal. When viewed in images of
Shangri-La (on the other side of Titan), island-like landforms of this
size tend to occur in clusters with apparent preferred orientations. The
small islands in Fensal appear much more scattered (and most appear
roughly circular), although a few islands do have an east-west orientation
to their long axis.
Aztlan, on the other hand, appears comparatively devoid of small islands,
with three large islands in its western reaches, plus only a few smaller
islands. The largest of these islands is called "Sotra Facula" (just right
of center in the bottom left mosaic frame), and measures 240 by 120
kilometers (149 to 75 miles) across.
The territory covered by this mosaic is similar to that seen in PIA06222,
which is composed of images from Cassini's March 2005 Titan flyby.
However, the gaps between the images in this mosaic are smaller and fewer
than in the earlier mosaic.
The mosaic is centered on a region at 7 degrees north latitude, 21 degrees
west longitude on Titan.
These Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera images were taken using a
filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938
nanometers. They were acquired at distances ranging from approximately
200,600 to 191,800 kilometers (124,600 to 119,200 miles) from Titan.
Resolution in the images is about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) per pixel.
Each image has been strongly enhanced to improve the visibility of surface
features.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.