Space Topics: Cassini-Huygens
The Year in Pictures: 2005
Huygens Lands Softly On Titan's Dark PLains
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Credit: ESA / NASA / JPL / University of Arizona
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January 14: After its gentle landing, Huygens returned hundreds of
images that looked like this one, showing a flat plain strewn with icy cobbles
up to about 15 centimeters (6 inches) in diameter. The last moments of the
descent were recorded by radio and acoustic sensors and can be relived in the
form of strange
sounds from Titan.
Credit: ESA / NASA / JPL / University of Arizona / Marco Di Lorenzo |
Huygens returned images
and other data to Cassini for more than an hour after landing. During
that time, Huygens detected a
whiff of methane escaping as heat from the probe
warmed the ground. Although the landscape appears dry, there may be vast
deposits of methane liquid just beneath the surface. At left, the image
was artificially colorized by enthusiast Marco Di Lorenzo to give an impression
of what it might look like to human eyes.
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