  We present evidence for condensed phase methane precipitation near Xanadu
using nine nights of observations from the SINFONI integral-field spectrograph
at the Very Large Telescope and imaging analysis with empirical surface
subtraction. Radiative transfer models are used to support the imaging
technique by simulating the spectrometer datacubes and testing for variations
in both the surface reflectivity spectrum and atmospheric opacity. We use the
models and observations together to argue against artifacts that may arise in
the image analysis. High phase angle observations from Cassini/VIMS are used to
test against surface scattering artifacts that may be confused with sources of
atmospheric opacity. Although changes in the surface reflectivity spectrum can
reproduce observations from a particular viewing geometry on a given night,
multiple observations are best modeled by condensed-phase methane opacity near
the surface. These observations and modeling indicate that the condensed-phase
methane opacity observed with this technique occurs predominantly near Xanadu
and is most likely due to precipitation.
