This animation shows the Cassini spacecraft approaching Titan. The strips of data on the globe represent areas observed with the Cassini radar instrument. The pink swatch is the area observed by the radar instrument during the Oct. 2004 flyby, while the blue area represents the coverage observed during the Feb. 15 flyby. The movie zooms into several interesting areas on Titan, including a giant crater the size of Iowa, an area with bright hills and ridges surrounded by a dark plain, and a smaller crater with a blanket of material surrounding it, possibly due to ejected material being thrown out of the crater after an impact.

Click on the image above to download the QuickTime movie for the animated version.

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 Cassini-Huygens 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 radar instrument team is based at JPL, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.