More New DISR Mosaics

The DISR team has released three additional mosaics showing the ground track of the Huygens spacecraft over the surface of Titan three months ago.

• The first mosaic shows the landing site region from an altitude of 15 km, with the ground track of the probe from 49 km downward. The coverage shown in this mosaic is similar to that of the mosaic produced by Rene Pascal. Personally, I prefer his mosaic since it is not nearly as smoothed out. Yes, you still see some of the noise in his mosaic and it has not been as geometrically controlled as the DISR team's mosaic, but maintaining the fidelity of the constituent images does have its uses.
• The second mosaic, shown above, simulates the view from 4 km, with the ground track drawn in. This view shows the features on the nearby bright island as well as the bright, wispy features in the dark material. I am still puzzled by these wispy features.
• The third mosaic shows the landing site region from an altitude of 500 meters, with the ground track of the probe drawn in. The ground track at this scale is quite intriguing. Previously, it had been mentioned that the probe appeared to turn north in the last few kilometers, but based on an early animation of this motion, I had thought the probe turned back to the way it came. This graphic demostrates that. The probe started to slow down its forward motion at around 12-13 km, then started to turn around at 7-8 km in altitude. It then headed in the direction from whence it came, and landed very close to where it was overhead at 13 km. This mosaic is on a slightly higher scale from one of the mosaics released yesterday, showing gully-like features around small outcrops within the dark terrain.

The grey circles in the first and second mosaics show the outlines of the next mosaic.