Excitement and puzzlement as Cornell views first Titan images

At 2:55 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 14, the first image of the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, taken by the Cassini-Huygens space probe, was shown to the world. Taken from an altitude of 10 miles as the saucer-shaped Huygens probe parachuted through the murky orange atmosphere, the raw, unprocessed image showed what appeared to be drainage channels flowing into a dark, featureless region.

"Mudslides!" was among the verbal reactions from those present in the third-floor Spacecraft Imaging Facility (SPIF) conference room in the Space Sciences Building. Indeed, it was hard not to imagine that the scene depicted rivers flowing into a large body of liquid, complete with shoreline and nearby islands.

"This high-altitude photo looks a lot like the runoff channels we have seen on Mars," offered astronomy graduate student Britt Scharringhausen.

The comments amid the frissons of excitement as new images from above Titan and then on its surface came up on the screen via NASA-TV lasted for much of the day as members of the campus community and the general public who crowded into the building--courtesy of the Department of Astronomy and Rick Kline, SPIF's data manager--shared the rare experience of seeing a totally alien world for the first time through the electronic eyes and instruments of Huygens.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Jan05/Huygens.landing.deb.html