NASA Cassini Image: Titan's South Pole

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Cassini spies Titan's south polar vortex from below the moon in this image.

Imaging scientists are monitoring the vortex to study its seasonal development.

North on Titan is up and rotated 36 degrees to the left. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 13, 2012 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 889 nanometers.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 73 degrees. Image scale is 6 miles (9 kilometers) per pixel.

This movie captured by NASA'S Cassini spacecraft shows the south polar vortex, a swirling mass of gas around the pole in the atmosphere of Saturn’s giant moon, Titan.

The swirling mass appears to execute one full rotation in about nine hours – much faster than the moon's 16-day rotation period. The images were taken before and after a distant flyby of Titan on June 27, 2012.

The south pole of Titan (3,200 miles, or 5,150 kilometers, across) is near the center of the view.

For more information about the Cassini Solstice Mission visit www.nasa.gov/cassini and saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.