What lies beneath the orange moon?

in science •  6 years ago 

Wait for it...

Orange dunes... and blue and white water and other ices.

From the scattering of visible light by its hazy atmosphere, Titan can't be viewed in visible light, but it can be viewed in infrared and that can be converted back to realistic coloured images.

PIA21923-Titan-SaturnMoon-InfraredViews-20180718.jpg
By NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Nantes/University of Arizona - https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA21923_fig1.jpg, Public Domain, Link

July last year was the first time we have been able to look at Titan in this way after 13 years of data collection.

The views were created using 13 years of data acquired by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument on board NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The images are the result of a focused effort to smoothly combine data from the multitude of different observations VIMS made under a wide variety of lighting and viewing conditions over the course of Cassini's mission.

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Apparently, the purple areas could be water ice with minerals inside.

the beauty is stunning

Wow 13 years of patience! Worthit though, beautiful images

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