New Titan Image: Clues in the Bright and Dark

CICLOPS has released this view of Titan taken by Cassini on June 4, 2005 from a distance of 1.2 million km (for a resolution of 7 km/pixel). This view was taken shortly before the "lake" image, and was discussed here last month. This image shows surface features in and around the large bright region known as Xanadu. Xanadu here is fairly mottled with small dark spots along with regions of brighter terrain, like the "smile"-shaped surface feature. The "Smile" was also seen by VIMS during T4 and T5 and was found to be the bright feature on the surface of Titan at 5 microns. The bright area at 4 o'clock is actually a patch of clouds, perhaps the same area of clouds seen a day later in the lake image released earlier.