Like an ancient mariner charting the coastline of an unexplored wilderness, Cassini's repeated encounters with Titan are turning a mysterious world into a known place.
During Titan flybys in September and October, 2005, the spacecraft's narrow-angle camera acquired multiple high- and medium-resolution images that were combined to create the mosaics presented here. Provisional names applied to Titan's features are shown in the labeled mosaics; unlabelled versions also are shown here.
The first mosaic is a high resolution close-up of two contrasting regions: dark Shangri-La and bright Xanadu. This view has a resolution of 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel and is centered at 2.5 degrees North latitude, 145 degrees West longitude, near the feature called Santorini Facula. The mosaic is composed of 10 images obtained on October 28, 2005, each processed to enhance surface detail.
The second mosaic shows more than half of Titan's Saturn-facing hemisphere at moderate resolution, including the Fensal-Aztlan region, formerly "the H." This view is centered at 6.5 degrees North latitude, 20.6 degrees West longitude, and has a pixel scale of about 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel.
This view is composed of 20 images obtained on September 7, 2005, each processed to enhance surface detail. The central portion of this mosaic was previously released without labels (see PIA07732).
Both mosaics are orthographic projections, rotated so that north on Titan is up.
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 imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.