Date: 17 Feb 2005
Satellite: Cassini
Depicts: Titan
Copyright: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Saturn's large, smog-enshrouded moon Titan greets Cassini in full colour as the spacecraft makes its third close pass on 15 February 2005.

This view has been rotated so that north on Titan is up. There is a slight difference in brightness from north to south, a seasonal effect that was noted in NASA's Voyager spacecraft images, and is clearly visible in some infrared images from Cassini. The northern polar region is largely in darkness at this time.

This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera through using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural colour view. The image was acquired at a distance of approximately 229 000 kilometres from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 20 degrees. Resolution in the image is about 14 kilometres per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.