I'm looking for a recent map ot Titan. Steve Albers's page links to one done by Fridger Schrempp in April 2005. Cassini has done a dozen flybys since then. Does anyone know if an updated map has been released.
I believe we have one coming soon!?
VP did talk about it earlier this year.
It's going
I'm hoping to have it done in the next couple of weeks.
^ Wow I got goose bumps!!
Very excited now!
Any idea when the new map is released?
Anytime between 20 minutes ago and next year.
Umm...Is that estimate given with 3-sigma confidence or?
"...Anytime between 20 minutes ago and next year...."
REAL-SOON-NOW: Anytime between now and the decay of the last proton in the universe.
I always liked this method from the http://qntm.org/destroy website, I know it is a little of topic but relevent to the last comment nonetheless.
You will need: all-surpassing patience
Method: If the Big Crunch doesn't happen, and the Big Rip doesn't happen either, then we come back to the third option: the Big Chill. For this, the universe will just expand, forever. The laws of thermodynamics take over. Every galaxy becomes isolated from its neighbours. All the stars burn out. Everything gets colder until it's all the same temperature. And after that, nothing ever changes in the universe. For eternity.
A lot can happen in an eternity. Protons, for example, while incredibly stable, are believed to eventually decay like any other particle. So simply wait for a period of time of the order of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years, and roughly half of the constituent particles of Earth will have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_decay. If that's still too much like a planet for you, you could wait for another 10^36 years, leaving only a quarter of the original Earth. Or wait even longer. Eventually there will be as little of Earth left as you wish.
Earth's final resting place: Miscellaneous positrons and gamma radiation (pions decay almost instantly into gamma ray photons) scattered thinly across the entire universe.
Sure, and by then all the Titan maps will be gone, and I will have waited all that time for Nothing!
-
John Sheff
Cambridge, MA
I think the map makers are holding off until the poorly imaged area are imaged well from Febraury 2007.
actually no. I'm just a perfectionist...
So where can I find the last published map?
Try this: http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=871
I don't know if any more up-to-date maps were released in the meantime. IMHO, it would be high time to release an updated map with better Fensal-Aztlan coverage! (hint, hint, Jason )
Almost half way -- 42 days down, 40 to go.
Unless that was a Saturn year, of course . . .
--Greg :-)
I hope we get some color this time!
I can't wait to see a hybrid image/radar combination.
Ingenious! But I think it might look like Grandma's wallpaper. I'd rather have separate maps of each dataset.
Phil
for those with Photoshop, a map with different layers for each data set might be possible.
Greetings,
I think it might be interesting to try a map based on spatial filtering. In other words, larger scale details could be from ISS data and moderately finer details could be filled in with radar. VIMS could help perhaps in areas that ISS doesn't have coverage and vice versa? In any case, each dataset could fill in for those locations and spatial scales where they do best. Might be some effort, yet could provide a single more complete view.
The Ciclops page pointed to earlier was last updated in Early 2005. Have the more recent flybys covered new territory? Since we seem to be focusing mostly on Titan, it might be nice to get an updated composite image like that for every flyby. We have a new pass coming on December 27th. Can we get a nice new map in honour of Kepler's 435th birthday?
The official and updated Titan map was finished a while ago. It's obviously pending a release sometime soon (I'm really hoping by the end of the year, this hiatus has IMHO gone for long enough), maybe they're waiting for one of those significant dates to release. I'm thinking Christmas or the sorts. Probably updated maps of other icy sats as well.
Has someone got an explanation why Titans dark flat plains are along the equator??Dont think that is coincidental!
It sounds like what you guys want is a JMARS for Titan. Jmars allows one to get all of the latest images (It doesn't do MRO, yet...), and compare between several different missions. It would work well to compare VIMS/RADAR/ISS images, there'd just be a layer for the whole planet. Of course, Titan doesn't have the large number of images that Mars does, but...
There was a time in Titan's earlier history when, apparently, it was subject to the same degree of tidal squeezing that Europa experiences today at Jupiter.
And thats a lot of tidal stress.
Please, please, please, can we have an updated map?
- John Sheff
Cambridge, MA
I'm perfectly aware you work near each other and are bound to see each others' work before the rest of us get to see it. I still feel that post of yours was more about rubbing our noses than anything else.
Just my 2c.
Brilliant, Stu! Brilliant!
Wow cutie in the front!
tuvas, from what you saw is the Titan map gonna blow last the last map out of the water?
I'm trying to get a feel for what to expect.
Happy now?
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08346
You've gotta be kidding. This is what all the fuss was about?
Boy, Alex is underwhelmed.
I'm glad to see it. I do find some of the seams surprising since they are "texture" seams, with shading captured pretty well. It seems like sometimes limited resolution was rendered hazily and sometimes it was rendered with an almost half-tone-looking grainy -- but sharp -- quality.
We're basically four good flybys away from bringing most of the "Here There Be Dragons" areas up to the standard of the rest of it: Two over Senkyo and Belet and two over the northern areas when the extended mission puts them into daylight.
Now let's add a splash of VIMS color and see if there's a graceful way to use RADAR data to sharpen up portions of the map without miscasting the RADAR data as being equivalent to IR (which it isn't).
I'm happy to have it, too.
-John Sheff
Cambridge, MA
Ahhh, how soon we forget...
A couple of years ago Titan was just an orange-tinted spark next to Saturn in my telescope eyepiece on clear nights. I knew it was a world, because Voyager had sent back those images showing it as a murky orange ball, fuzzy atmosphere and all, but that was all anyone knew really. Now we have a picture of its surface, and, wonder of wonders, an actual map, showing it has landscapes and topography beyond our wildest dreams. I'm sure that map will get much, much better as time goes by, but for now I'm happy to have any map at all. Good work guys, thanks.
For those who want a combined ISS map and RADAR swath (up to T8) Photoshop file, check out: http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~perry/Titan_map/2006_map.release.psd. I was going to include a VIMS map from T8 and T9, but that ballooned the file to over 164 MB, almost 5 times its current 35 MB size.
Well, I'm still work on smoothing techniques across multiple data sets. I'll admit this one was more of a case of needing to get something out since we haven't had a released map update since January of last year. Unfortunately that's about as cleaned up as I could get it without using destructive low pass filters. The data is already a bit blurry, I see no point in making it worse.
I for one am not underwhelmed by the update as I realized any update couldn't bring much greater resolution than what was already available at Shangri-La. This is probably as high a resolution as we'll get from ISS. One must always keep the expectations reasonable. That's one of the reasons the overdue release delay bothered me, though. That said, I do find the Fensal-Aztlan region to be better defined than Shangri-La. As JRehling said, it appears less grainy. Weren't the pixel scales for the mosaics comparable? Is this a result of different camera parameters / filter combos as the Fensal region looks well defined, albeit including those texture seams? Am I right in assuming you didn't use every flyby that provided repeated coverage (over Fensal), for improved S/N ratio and reduced seaming?
The mosaics used in the Fensal-Aztlan region have a higher pixel scale than those used in the Shangri-la region. Maps incorporating Ta and Tb REGMAP and HIRES should be available in a future release.
Well, I for one am far from underwhelmed. A couple of years back, even seeing the 'H' in those early Earth-based images - remember? - seemed beyond belief. Now we're seeing so much more, and with the promise of more to come!
I can wait!
Bob Shaw
LOL
I for one would love to see a surface temp overlay on all these features (yep...cryovolcano seeker here! )
^^Maybe next Holiday Season!
Well, there are some changes on Titan surface! Mezzoramia looks very pale compared to previous map and two or three white spots appear near 15 and 20 degrees WL. Yet another one white dot encircled in dark near 50 WL 65 SL disappear. What can it be? Really changes, artefacts of processing or just clouds?
Good eye, Olvegg. I'd have to bet on convective clouds, especially for high-latitude features like these; seems like the polar regions are where most of the action's at for Titan's weather.
Yeah, really bright spots at high latitudes are more than likely clouds. It seems that when ever we look at the south polar region at decent enough emission angles that the images can be used in maps, there are clouds down there, so it is hard to remove ALL the clouds from the map.
In terms of contrast difference, I chalk that up to differences in the my sharpening filter in the last 2 years.
I've always been surprised that there aren't more amateur Titan ORS mosaics here. (I realise it's a bit of a challenge, but that doesn't usually stop you lot...)
Surprisingly, there aren't a whole lot of people playing around any Cassini images that I can see. Titan would make a pretty hard target to work with, given no easy way to reduce atmospheric haze. You really need excellent flatfields and either you can brew your own ones (hard to do manually) or work with the not so good ones on the calibration volumes. There's a lot to be desired there, especially for the wide-angle camera flatfields which would make simple mosaics easier than taking a shot at high-res NAC footprints. Geometric reprojection would also be handy since the exposures are long and the flybys pretty fast. SPICE kernels in other words...
Just had an odd thought...Is Titan a cold "desert" planet?
Specifically, it almost seems as if the polar regions are the only areas where precipitation seems to occur with any degree of regularity. If Titan was a terrestrial planet with a similar pattern, the expectation would be that the lower latitudes were too hot to sustain an Earth-style hydrological cycle, and only the poles were temperate enough for habitation...like some of the pre-UMSF ideas about Venus, in some ways.
Again, just a thought. No matter how good our maps get, I think that interpreting them within an understandable framework will be a challenge for a LONG time.
Is there any online reference as to how the titan images are produced??
Tricks and Tips!
Yeah, JR--I used to live in Tucson, and that's exactly the same impression I got. The entire area is usually dry as a bone all year until monsoon season hits in June/July, and then it's flash-flood time which produces/reinforces all these massive arroyos. Perhaps the same thing happens in Titan's equatorial regions every 14.5 terrestrial years or so...
Does anyone out there have a hypothesis/explanation for the distinctly swoopy pattern of the overall look of the margin of the of the bright terrain against the dark terrain?
It seems that the bright features have an almost parallel aerodynamic look to them. This is particulary evident in the margins around Shangri-La (basin).
This has been fascinating me since the first pass: to my eyes, they look almost like a terrestrial fjord landscape.
Could this be resulting from wind deposition of upland (bright) material from cryovolcanic airfall?
Or could this be from wind deposition of the organic “shizzle” which piles up downwind against the bright material?
Or is it possible that there has been an equivalent of a past ice age on Titan, with methane snows piling up, forming methane glaciers, and coming down off Xanadu and other upland terrains?
Any ideas?
-Mike
Edit: Sorry, didn't realize the map had already posted. Should have read the earlier posts.
Greetings,
Here's a real quick 1K Titan map taking the latest official one from late 2006 and overlaying mosaics from a couple of the recent flybys. As usual this can be refined in the future. Perhaps even some north polar radar mosaics can be added if they are on a suitable projection - a certain map I noticed from EC comes to mind.
http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/saturn/titan/titan_rgb_cyl_070621c.jpg
That's nice!
Although a mercator projection centered at the equator distorts exactly what is interesting at Titan...
Wow! Nice job!
-Mike
Interesting speculation, Mike. I see your point about the similarities between the Xanadu/Fensal-Quivra-Azltan construct and Mars' Tharsis bulge.
However -- just how efficiently could Titan shift its orientation when locked into a tidal resonance with Saturn? Mars spins very fast, relatively speaking, and has a whole lot more rotational energy with which to shift the entire planet onto its side (so to speak). Titan, in contrast, spins very slowly on its axis and has the very deep Saturnian gravity well to deal with. I'd almost believe that tidal attraction from Saturn would supply more energy to such a process than Titan's own rotational energy could provide.
If Titan's mass was redistributed in a manner similar to what happened on Mars, I'd be willing to bet you'd see the thing reach an equilibrium with the "heaviest" part of the mass tidally locked, facing Saturn. Is that what we're seeing here? If not, I have to wonder a bit as to how the mechanism would work...
-the other Doug
That's a really good point, David.
Without doing the math (yuk!), I'd guess tidal effects (including eccentricity) would swamp out the rotation rate.
So I'd guess it would make more sense for the Xanadu bulge to be at either the Subsaturn point or at the AntiSaturn point. And at longitude 90-100 W, it's pretty much in the wrong spot.
Now I'm even more clueless....
-Mike
I'm glad I could confuse you even moreso than before, Mark...
-the other DOUG ()
Apologies! I meant "That's a really good point, DOUG".
(With all this new information, the connection between the two hemispheres of Juramike's brain finally snapped. Juramike could never again place the name of an object with it's shape. For the rest of his natural life, Juramike referred to any bowl-like object as "crater" )
Hi again,
I've made a few more map updates and increased the size to 4K. This is also now posted on my regular web site at the following URL:
http://laps.fsl.noaa.gov/albers/sos/sos.html#TITAN
Interesting to see what looks like those long rivers flowing toward the seas of the north pole.
Beautiful work ....
Agree that Titan seems to be a desert world but we have to be careful not to carry that analogy too far.
Remember that Huygens detected a lot of methane coming out of the ice/hdrocarbon regolith (smurst?) after it impacted.
I am REALLY looking forward to better views of the southern pole. We need to understand how the the 7 year summer at the south pole has affected the methane cycle and the geochemistry and geophysics in that region as well.
More FUN coming up juramike!!!!!!!!
Craig
stevesliva said:
"That's nice!
Although a mercator projection centered at the equator distorts exactly what is interesting at Titan... "
I want to comment on this because I have encountered this elsewhere. The most fundamental cartographic product - and the hardest to make - is the initial global mosaic itself. Once you have it, it can be reprojected into any other form of map with appropriate software. I will post a polar view of Steve's new map later to demonstrate. Don't think of the simple cylindrical map as an end in itself, it's an image database which can be turned into any other map projection, or wrapped around a sphere, or animated... etc. And frankly the simple cylindrical is just about the easiest of those things to make the other products from.
I encountered this with my new Eros mosaic - why make an old-fashioned flat map? Why not project it onto a 3-D shape model and animate it? - but where do you think the mosaic to project onto the model comes from in the first place?
(oh, and yes, it's not Mercator! It's Simple Cylindrical, where a degree is represented by a specified number of pixels in both E-W or N-S directions. In Mercator the N-S spacing varies away from the equator.)
Phil
I can't wait for that polar version. I've been hoping someone would provide a south polar map of Titan for ages. I even posted a request on CICLOPS. So far I've only seen it in small PDF format used as a base for the flyby groundtracks.
Hallelujah!
Beautiful, just beautiful. Now that we've seen the radar of the northern region, it's a little easier to interpret the dark markings at the south pole, although it now becomes a matter of wonder why the 'bean-shaped' lake is, not just a lake, but one with such smooth and nicely curved boundaries, unlike both the northern lakes and the other lakes in its vicinity.
I wonder if the "gray" areas in the temperate zones might be -- I'm not sure of a proper terminology that doesn't imply vegetation, but anyway -- swamp, or wetland -- shallow lacustrine regions that are intermittently (seasonally?) dry, or at any rate more like perpetually damp, methanelogged land, than like lakes, thus perhaps being an intermediate term between the polar lakes and the equatorial deserts, which (as suggested above) might be concealing a fair bit of subterranean moisture as well.
This is my first post on a Titan thread.
The Bean shaped lake looks like it is sitting in a volcanic caldera.
I know it's only a 2d map on which deapth is very hard to infer, the area around the lake seems to be sloping away from it.
Roy
I'm not sure how useful this will be, but here's my attempt at combining the ISS and VIMS mosiacs of Titan:
Dear Steve, Alan, and Phil,
Wow! That's an awesome combination (of effort and images)!
Based on this combination of ISS and VIMS images, I speculatively identified additional "circular objects of interest" beyond those in this http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=4177&view=findpost&p=91758.
Here are the newly tentatively identified "craterforms" drawn on the mosaic made by Steve (Circles drawn outside the tentative diameter of the craterform for clarity):
mudflats?
How about a "goo-flat"?
Methane rain bring down organic shizzle where it accumulates into masses/drifts/globs on the surface. Without a major flooding event it will sit and get coated in "bright material" or other atmospheric coatings.
Picture an on Earth full of shallow water like a flooded bayou. Then frogs lay oodles and oodles of humungous egg masses all over the place. As the water evaporates (or drains away) the gelatinous gooey egg masses are revealed on the surface. Imagine walking around with jiggling, gross, yukky masses forming a rough terrain as far as the eye can see.
I imagine the Titanian "goo-flat" would look like that.
(Slightly RADAR rough, ISS/VIMS would look like brighter material - definitely not dark blue ice sands nor dark brown dune sands)
[[Not a place for a romantic holiday]].
-Mike
P.S. Does anyone know what Death Valley (Badwater with the salt crystals) would look like by SAR? Would it appear roughish?
Amazing! It does look pretty similar!
It took a few twists and turns with Google Earth to realize that this is of the northern (dune) part of Death Valley.
Unfortunately, Badwater is just to the SSW from the lowest part of the image. I was wondering if the knobby little salt incrustations ('bout 10-20 inches across if I remember correct) of Devil's Golfcourse (near Badwater) would show up and similar to Cassini SAR of the Temperate zones.
So close....
-Mike
Greetings,
Thought I'd mention a slight cleanup on the Titan map that I've now posted at this URL:
http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/sos.html#TITAN
One can keep fiddling with this thing for quite a while...
Steve, isn't your map aligned in a different way other maps have been submitted? I can't overlay your map onto previous maps.
Cap-Team - this is hard for me to say. This should be the same as my previous iteration. It is centered on 180 degrees longitude and is a cylindrical equidistant projection if that helps you to overlay it.
I created a graphic showing currently available north polar RADAR swaths that dip partially into the Equatorial Sand Sea.
This is adapted from the graphic in Mitchell et al IOF 2007 Abstract 6042 "Titan's North Polar Lakes as Observed by Cassini RADAR: An Update." (Abstract freely NO LONGER available http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007LPICo1357...97M. )
I've been using this to help make RADAR composites of Equatorial Sand Sea Basins:
The Planetary Photojournal has release a new ISS Mosaic of Titan today! PIA08399.
Available at: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08399
I have taken all the Equatorial RADAR swath sections and overlaid them onto this new Mosaic:
Nice map. Mike.... thanks.
And we have your plots on the south polar projection....
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=3698&view=findpost&p=102003
Will be very interesting to see what ALL the instruments reveal there.
Been reviewing the literature on clouds and hydrocarbon lakes and Titan climate models. What CHANGES will we see in the future....will comment later.
A world-view is slowly beginning to develop.
Craig
Juramike - post 115: go through LPI instead:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/icysat2007/pdf/6042.pdf
Phil
This is the new radar map of the north pole added to the new ISS map:
Great stuff, Phil!
I don't suppose there's a slightly less compressed version of the cylindrical map to be had?
Wow! Thanks, Phil!
That really fills in the northern terra incognita in the cylindrical projection! Nice to see it all being realized.
-Mike
Fantastic Phil....
Craig
Phil, it's really fantastic Thank you very much.
Hokay.... I tried to add the equatorial RADAR pieces over Phil Stooke's latest map to give a big RADAR composite on top of ISS images:
I'd love to see Phil's map in a proper Mercator projection -- those northern lakes would look HUGE.
Here is the simple cylindrical map with reprojected versions of all the SAR swaths between Ta and T21 except the HiSAR stuff and T18 (will try to add that soon):
Beautiful!
Thanks, VP!
-Mike
You're the man, VP.
--Emily
Thanks VP!!!!
Is this release of the ISS Titan map part of your work?
I was just using this map to enlighten an office mate!!!!! Exploring a world by investigating the different equatorial albedo regions. Then the serendipty of the north polar passes (I know that main reason was to crank the inclination for CASSINI).
Soon we will have more RADAR over the south pole.
Those radar noodles across the surface and the refined imaging data really serve to illustrate that method. Fuzzy features slowly come into focus. The slow pealing away of mystery to reveal details with even more mystery.
Neat thing would be to have a movie showing the early Keck maps and then slowly overlaying the different CASSINI map versions (including each RADAR noodle as it occurred) until we see the current state. That would be a neat educational tool.
Any of you image gurus game for that?
Thanks to the CASINI team and all you UMSF folks!!!!!
Just Glorious!!!!
Craig
... and another version. Here I've taken VP's latest map and combined it with mine to link the radar strips. Then I did a bit of contrast modification. Less compressed, for ugordan.
Phil
Outstanding, thanks a lot Phil. That's a keeper!
"I notice on this map at the extreme left, just above the bunny rabbit, some vaguely
N-S striations (dunes) that I hadnt seen before and seem to be orthogonal to the
more typical orientation. Are these real or are they some sort of ISS artifact ?"
Heh heh! Good one, Ralph...
Phil
Duh - sorry, Ralph. I thought you were making a joke about the n-s trending straight lines at the top of the map... reprojected grid lines. I should never have doubted you. I never will again... well, not very often.
Phil
Ralph, those are artifacts. The original CB3 images (or MT1 images, I can't recall at the moment) were taken in 8-bit mode in that area, so you see some effects from the dithering. And regarding the implication that if it isn't RADAR, it's cr@p, I'm telling!!!
BTW, here is the updated map with all RADAR SAR swaths in the PDS at the moment (including all the HiSAR stuff).
VP...
Right now, you rule, man!!!!!
Even if I am more partial to the detail in the SAR...
Craig
OK, I've [almost] given up.
Does anyone have any idea where the T19 Distant targeted look fits in?
I've been struggling to fit this in and just haven't been able make it work.
-Mike
Speaking of dark splots...the new mosaic shows a really nice dark splot down in S Senkyo basin.
Could this be an artifact or a Senkyo version of Omacatl Macula?
(It seemed to be present on the older maps as well, the newer mosaic brings out the contrast).
-Mike
[EDIT: Feature indicated]:
That little spot is one of my favorite little areas. Not sure what it is. It isn't an artifact, it has been seen in a number of mosaics covering this region. One possibility is that it could be a buried impact crater. In this area, it would appear we have bright material partly covered in dunes, but we have this circular feature that is much darker than the surrounding terrain. Perhaps this is an impact crater that has been subsequently filled in with sediment, then covered in dunes. Another possibility is that it is similar to Omacatl, a cryovolcano with an ashfall deposit, but this really doesn't have the same, parabolic shape that Omacatl and Elpis have.
The parabolic inky black shape of Omacatl and Elpis Macula(e?) would be due to the prevailing winds causing the cryoashfall drift.
But the wind strength varies as Titan moves around in it's orbit, if the General Circulation Models are correct.
So...maybe the S Senkyo splot [name needed here] was a single-shot deal done during a calm-wind period. That would give it a nice regular circular diffusion to the fallout pattern rather than a downwind parabola.
Any chance this feature was imaged in the "secret unreleased RADAR swath"?
-Mike
I doubt that. Winds can vary, but I doubt there would dead calm for the duration or an eruption or eruptions, particularly at the altitude of the top of the eruption column.
Okay, I'll bite. What secret, unreleased SAR swath? T23?
Yup. T23 (Jan 13, 2007) RADAR Swath.
I'm hoping they release it soon.....
The few images they've released (Ganesa Macula, half-crater image) are teasingly cool-o....
-Mike
Some new images of Titan were taken on October 22. They cover the lowest resolution area on the latest Titan maps.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/raw-images-details.cfm?feiImageID=130136
Maping question. For locked moons, is 0 degrees on the maps the direction towards Saturn? What is the convention for this sort of thing? Hope this is not too stupid a question.
Yes that is how I understand it with zero degrees longitude towards Saturn...
That is indeed the basic idea, but because of orbital eccentricity etc which makes the sub-planet point move around a bit the actual zero point is defined relative to a specific feature on the surface. That has not yet been done for Titan. The feature in question does not have to be on zero longitude, but zero is measured relative to it.
Phil
Hey Gordan, what do you think of this further enhancement of your last version? I see a lot of details, are they real?
Thank you for the responses to my map question. Floyd
Here's a question that seems appropriate in this context:
What is thought to be the primary cause of nutation in planetary moons? Is it gravitational, and does nutation by gravitational perturbance require a body to be significantly non-homogenous? Or is it thought to be remnant motion imparted by large impacts? Or is it a range of influences, no one of which can be cited genercially as "primary"?
I ask because while you might expect to see impact-related nutation on a scarred body like the Moon, you don't seem to see large basins on Titan whose formation could have been expected to toss a body out of kilter...
-the other Doug
Planetary photojournal released a nice tif format 80 degree (approx.) phase titan pic yesterday.
I ran a bandpass filtering on it to being out every last bit of surface detail in the data.
The atmosphere seems to be pretty featureless in this band, though there's general east-west diffuse streakiness in the north <less visible in the south> at high lattitudes.
Will the CICLOPS map page be updated this month?
http://ciclops.org/maps.php
on a related topic, does anyone have or knowlocation of a Titan Radar Planning chart showing
swath locations? most curious where the 4-year tour mapping coverage will get us to...
paul
I'm not sure where I stumbled across this a while back, but here's an old map of the planned RADAR swaths (looks like early 2005):
Using VP's awesome new http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~perry/RADAR/, we can revisit http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09035. All those noodles are starting to make me hungry.
I just wanted to clarify if all radar swath for the north polar region have been released?
Didn't want to create a new topic for this but some bloke http://www.evs-islands.com/2008/02/titans-unnamed-methane-sea.html of Titan's largest northern sea and has a couple of questions about it that I'm sure there are folks here who know the answer.
I don't know about anyone else but I'm a sucker for nautical\coastline maps like these and even at a basic level like this having someone make one for a sea on an entirely different world is pretty cool.
I posted an answer to his question on his blog. He'll need to approve it for it to show up.
Greetings,
Here is a version of Titan made using the second most recent official IR release, with Gordan's image from post #151 added on top.
"Is it possible to pinpoint the Huygens landing site on this map?"
Look at this image of combined VIMS and DISR views of the landing site.
Whoo-hoo! New Global Titan map released today!
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11149
Nice to see the additional coverage, though this seemingly has more pronounced seams than some of the older versions.
Okay, let's not cross any lines here...
We are on the threshold of an unseemly post
Greetings, here's the 2011 CICLOPS Titan map shown with feature names:
And here's volcanopele's 2011 radar map with feature names. More of the smaller lakes are labeled:
As for the seams... don't forget these are preliminary rather than final mission products. There's not much point putting all that effort into making a perfect map if it's going to be superceded very soon. You'll see much better stuff after Titan imaging is finished.
Phil
I have to marvel at how much remains unknown about Titan, even after eight years of flawless performance by Cassini/Huygens.
There is certainly a huge amount left to be sorted out by an airplane or balloon mission, not to mention floating and seismic platforms.
All treats in store for future generations, it would seem.
One of the Jason's map (thanks!) with labeled SAR swaths (all of them between T00A to T071 and even one from T77 flyby).
It's in PDF format, so it's easier to find location of every radar swath of Titan.
White labels - "normal" SAR swaths.
Yellow labels - Hi-SAR swaths.
Red labels - mostly Hi-SAR swaths not used in background map.
http://planets.wz.cz/saturn/satorig/tit_cas_dam_007.pdf
Thanks Machi for that very useful update of the Titan map! VP's maps are awesome but the overall map was not labeled and (at least in this blogsphere) are now more useful due to the white labels especially.
Below is your map (at reduced size and resolution) with a coordinate grid as many referenced photos and swaths are given by such coordinates.
Here's my take on Titan, an effort I've wanted to pursue to get a map that is relatively seamless, relatively tied to scientific reality, and relatively complete. I shared this with a few people last fall.
First, a huge component of what I have began with the maps that Fridger Schempp has posted at the following link. Everything I have produced is built on his contribution, which may well be 90% or 99% of the total work that produced my map.
http://forum.celestialmatters.org/viewtopic.php?t=305
My work is based on, in essence, a black-and-white map, which is Fridger's with a few added areas of focus, particularly the northern lakes and seas as seen by RADAR (fused in with IR imagery of southern Kraken), plus some IR coverage here:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14908
The most original portion of my work is in adding a color overlay. Color information for Titan comes from VIMS, and the coverage is highly variable depending upon incidence angles. This produces some ugly seams that I wanted to eliminate at the hazard of throwing out the scientific and accurate information (which is not well captured in those seams, anyway).
My approach in producing the color map was to combine two sources: First, global VIMS maps as seen here in the second map, using channels: B=1.27 μm, G=2.0 μm, R=4.8-5.2 μm.
http://europlanet.dlr.de/node/index.php?id=482
I also used VIMS details from the (very exciting) paper here:
http://barnesos.net/publications/papers/2011.11.Icarus.Barnes.Evaporite.pdf
The second color source (and the bridge used to connect those areas where VIMS coverage is poor) was the thematic mapping of equatorial areas in the particularly inspiring in Figure 19.19 Chapter 19 of "Titan From Cassini Huygens".
My overall approach was to extend the thematic mapping (which had a VIMS-inspired palette for the bright/blue/brown regions) to the higher latitudes, without providing much detail besides the categorical existence of the lakes and seas, and the VIMS-orange areas such as Tui, Hotei, and as seen in the evaporite paper. I blended the thematic map and the VIMS products with no principle other than aesthetics, trying to keep the VIMS details whenever possible without creating ugly (and implausible) seams.
It is exciting for me to contemplate the mapping of chemical composition to color; the five basic colors of my map are:
Blue: VIMS-blue areas, like the methane-wet sands where Huygens touched down. (Dark blue except in eastern Xanadu, where the blue signal covers bright terrain.)
Dark Brown: VIMS-brown areas, the sand dunes in equatorial regions.
Orange: HC3N deposits that are evaporites, left also in cryovolcanic regions.
Dark aqua: The methane/ethane lakes and seas.
"Bright": rendered yellowish in Stephan, et al, but varying in hue in VIMS products, notably more greenish in Xanadu where the 2.0 μm signal is stronger; coincidentally, radar volume scattering is stronger there too, which made me consider greenish overlays to distinguish how volume scattering looks to me in ice. The ambiguity of the composition of this bright terrain fed a major obsession in my reading the past few months; an intriguing story that has left us so far uncertain what is covering the largest portions of Titan.
I've attached a labeled version of the map. This has been repackaged a lot of ways: Unlabeled, a petal map, and a globe. I can upload the unlabeled and petal maps later if people are interested. I also attached some pictures of the resulting globe, and a side-by-side of the Titan globe with the Europa globe I made with the USGS map.
There is some work that can be done, especially in waiting for more coverage of the northern areas, and more VIMS coverage to add resolution in the color, where I airbrushed it into a pleasing but not always accurate seamlessness. But I can say that I have a Titan globe beautifying my home.
Fantastic, thank you!
there is the Perl script from
http://www.vendian.org/mncharity/dir3/planet_globes/
for taking a map and turning it into a globe"
The file sizes are quite large. I saved them as low-loss jpgs, and I'll post each separately. Here is the south polar petal plot.
And here is the north polar petal plot. I left an azimuthal orthographic map as the background for the petals, so if you want a little "tab" to extend beyond the margins, you have something that looks about right. If you cut right on the lines, this won't matter.
I applied the labels and grid after reprojecting this, so you won't get such a nice result if you reproject the cylindrical map.
Finally, here is the cylindrical map without labels. I hope people find this useful for widespread use in Celestia, etc.
At the AGU conference this past week I saw a Titan presentation showing a couple of de-noised radar images. For me it really makes the features stand out and saves the "on-the-fly" visual image processing needed to see the features. I wonder if anyone has considered processing most or all of the radar data with this type of algorithm, and if this can be the basis for a global map?
Here is an older example of this type of processing:
http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space-images/charts/titan_cassini_sar_denoising_example_aharonson.html
According to his personal page, http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~alucas/res.html intends to post online his denoised images of Titan soon.
I'm using different kind of non-local denoise filter - PureDenoise from Florian Luisier which isn't so good for SAR images as Deledalle's algorithm, but it's best
from filters which are available.
Here is little comparison (it's crop from T44 swath):
A small portion of the cool T59 SAR shows a possible rain dissected, southern, antiSaturn hemisphere plateau. A 'denoised' (thanks for the link to PureDenoise Machi http://bigwww.epfl.ch/algorithms/denoise/ )version of this topography is shown below. While an improvement on the jpeg images posted on VP's awesome site http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~perry/RADAR/BIUQH67S152_D201_T059S01_V02.jpg, there is a vertical banding artifact that I am sure someone out there knows how to eliminate. I am hopeful another SAR will image near this Titan location as an ISS dark albedo area is nearby, perhaps an old, mid latitude S hemisphere basin.
a quick run through isis3's "dstripe"
just a first guess , and still needs a bit of work
http://imgbox.com/adfVcyDI
a crop of
http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~perry/RADAR/BIUQH67S152_D201_T059S01_V02.jpg
without denoising first , "dstripe" tacks care of most of that
------
for that i tend to use gmic
Much thanks JohnVV for above. Have used your image to modify my T59 snippet map on the previous page. Must confess I am a Windows user and not familiar with isis. Is there a destripe type plugin for ImageJ?
Preliminary global map of Titan. Version 0.2.0.
Informations are directly in the map and on Flickr page.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/109586958@N03/24046183303/
Beautiful work, Machi! It's a challenge to get the very low-res topographical data merged with the albedo map, but your result is thought-provoking. With my Titan map/globe, I skipped the topographical data to focus on the color, but the topography is definitely worthwhile as well. With better data, a map could provide all three, but low-res topography doesn't lend itself, I guess, to being demonstrated through shading.
Yes! All your maps are really nice, and this superb combination of datasets is very useful, especially since there really is nothing else like it.
Phil
Thanks Phil!
Great map Daniel! I'm only browsing on a mobile device, but even so, the quality and sheer level of detail are clearly evident.
Do those maps contain SAR radar data after June 7, 2012?
I have seen no Full swaths released after that date.
I've noticed that as well. I check Jason Perry's SAR site from time to time but the flow of new data appears to have stopped.
This USGS mosaic contains all radar swathes up to and including the August 2014 T-104 data return:
http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/search/details/Titan/Cassini/Global-Mosaic/Titan_SAR_HiSAR_MosaicThru_T104_Jan2015_clon180_128ppd/cub
I used this mosaic and combined part of it with a cleaned and de-seamed and colorized ISS mosaic to produce this dynamic view of Adiri:
https://flic.kr/p/DXhSYehttps://flic.kr/p/DXhSYe by https://www.flickr.com/photos/10795027@N08/, on Flickr
A list of the recent radar returns:
Here's a nice summary map that just came out:
Link to page: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20022
Those are images, not maps. Maps are derived products from data such as this.
Just quibbling a bit....
"Just quibbling a bit...."
A groundless quibble, I'm afraid. This is VIMS data, collected over more than a decade - the high resolution VIMS cubes only cover small areas. So all that material has been assembled into a global mosaic (a mapping procedure if ever there was one) and is presented to us in an orthographic map projection - another mapping procedure. The small image of a crater might be 'not a map' but the global mosaic certainly is.
Phil
A basemap for mapping, maybe. But I wouldn't consider the VIMS dataset an interpreted or representative map product. Nor would I consider the SAR mosaic, even if normalized to a standard incidence angle, a true map product.
Just at what point does an image become a map product is a good question, and probably open to interpretation? Is an image a map already at acquisition? After calibration? Data correction? Radiometric correction (very very difficult on Titan)? Mosaic assembly? Projection? Contrast-enhancement and recolorization with a color scale? Scribbling colors and annotations on the data?
For me, mapping is the point where someone start scribbling interpretations, annotations, and representations on top of the dataset: "The rim of the crater is located here". "This is a mountain, the boundary is here." "This land is called Adiri" "Here there be tygers.", etc.
-Mike
Here is a non-local denoising filter: http://ximagic.com/d_index.html . Not as good looking as Antoine Lucas' work but better than none.
Your link gave seven different denoising filters, which one or ones did you use?
Very nice view of Ligeia Mare. In the long run this could really improve the global radar maps. On the link I recall just one of the filters was the "non-local" one.
It is a single plugin with 7 different algorithms. Non-Local Denoising gives the best results which is the same method used by Antoine Lucas. There is also a free Java plugin for ImageJ used by medical researchers which I did not try. http://imagej.net/Non_Local_Means_Denoise
Attached image is a crop from PIA09218, uncompressed files give a better result as expected (slightly sharpened). The success of the algorithm is measured by the difference with the original, which should be purely noise and not have any discernible features common with the original (may be except noise bands, artifacts etc.)
Here's a paper describing techniques for extracting more detail from ISS images.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.3215.pdf
I find this even more impressive:
http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2017/eposter/2518.pdf
(link to LPSC poster)
Phil
Thank for noting this Phil, I earlier inadvertantly posted another semi-related link. Here is what I was also looking at, the same work that you are noting:
http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2017/pdf/2518.pdf
It's neat to see how the ISS images now show more detail near the Huygens landing site.
I'm pleased to finally be able to reveal the fruits of a project that's been a long time (~4 years) in the making: an updated, amended, and restored version of the 2013 https://astrogeology.usgs.gov/search/map/Titan/Cassini/Global-Mosaic/Titan_ISS_Globe_65Sto45N_450M_AvgMos.
https://flic.kr/p/28xQsqWhttps://flic.kr/p/28xQsqW
https://flic.kr/p/28xR3P5https://flic.kr/p/28xR3P5
https://flic.kr/p/25ShRc9https://flic.kr/p/25ShRc9 by https://www.flickr.com/photos/10795027@N08/, on Flickr
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/Cassini Data Analysis Program/USGS Astrogeology Science Center/Ian Regan
This restoration was done primarily for the big screen film https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1879017/, by Stephen van Vuuren. For more details on the mosaic, and how I processed the polar regions completely from scratch, please visit the film's website: https://www.insaturnsrings.com/titan-seam-blending
Wonderful!
Just out of interest. Is that a lake, past or present, at roughly the 6 o/clock position perhaps about 60 south in the southern hemisphere polar projection?
P
Thanks!
In answer to your question, that dark feature is Polaznik Macula — a formation that plays host to two suspected temperate lakes: Sionascaig Lacus and Urmia Lacus:
http://thedragonstales.blogspot.com/2015/06/sionascaig-lacus-and-urmia-lacus.html
Truly magnificent maps! A joy to let the gaze wander freely at last over this wondrous world.
Ian,
Wow, those maps are fantastic! Thank you for showing us your long hard work. The explanation of how you did it, is inspiring. You are one cool cat!
Agreed! These are beautiful.
Phil
wow!
Ian, these are simply wonderful. Thank you!
Thanks everyone for the positive responses. As I'm sure you can imagine, this data was an absolute bear to work with, so although room for improvement undoubtedly exists, I'm generally delighted with the results.
I intend to post versions incorporating the SAR radar data (perhaps colour-coded? I'm undecided on the exact presentation.)
But for now, here are those three image products again, this time merged with topographical information from a paper by https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2017/pdf/2703.pdf:
https://flic.kr/p/27xduX2
https://flic.kr/p/27xduX2
https://flic.kr/p/28QJZiY
https://flic.kr/p/28QJZiY
https://flic.kr/p/Kg9Mdn
https://flic.kr/p/Kg9Mdn
Blue areas represent low-lying regions up to -1,800 metres below the average. Red areas indicates peaks of up to 650 metres.
Let me add my voice to the chorus of ...incredible work, Ian.
Interesting that there's a high region (...for Titan; pretty flat place, really) adjacent to the north polar sea complex. Gotta wonder if that provides orographic lift & enhances precipitation to feed them.
Thanks for the amazing maps Ian. Titan, being the Hydrocarbon Moon, is rather beautifully rendered like a colorful oil sheen!
Awesome maps and clearly a lot of work that was required to complete them. Titan isn't exactly the easiest 'image processing target' to work on.
Ian R Magnifico! You did what I always wanted. I was hoping for these maps !!
This is the most fascinating world after the Earth. No doubt.
The missions to observe Ligeia mare or Kraken sea closely are my dream, for my most important opinion of some primary mis-seals on Mars.
This is my Ligeia mare model 12x17 cm. Handmade. No 3D printer. I know, it's not perfect.
http://antidotumtarantulae.altervista.org/Bianchino_Daniele_Titan_moon_titano_model_Ligea_Mare_Ligeia.html
What color would you think of ethane-methane seas? I maybe I had to do this sea in black?
Perhaps a deep, black-ish-brown would be the right colour? Even so, it still looks great Daniele!
Another exercise in seam removal, but this time applied to stacked radar data from multiple Cassini flybys:
https://flic.kr/p/LXdTPyhttps://flic.kr/p/LXdTPy
And this one might be of interest to Daniele
https://flic.kr/p/26k4V2C
https://flic.kr/p/26k4V2C
My goodness Ian those are phenomenal. Do you have plans to make more? I feel like I've never seen the lakes this clearly.
That map of Ligeia is amazing. I like how visible the river that flows into NE Ligeia is (can see that in ISS data)
Ian, so much good work in every one of these products.
If I may, here is a brightened version of the Ligeia image, to emphasize details within the lake. It's clear that the channels continue well past the current shoreline, which would seem to indicate a lower surface level in the past.
At the risk of not actually adding anything to the discussion, I concur. These are fabulously clear views - congratulations to all for the hard work.
Amazing work Ian, looks like we are flying over it! Ligeia looks to my like a Gryphon or large bird.
Seeing Titan with Infrared Eyes
https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21923
Is it possible we will get a map version of this?
You have to have it as a map before it can be rendered as a spherical view. Eventually it will be released.
Phil
Mind-boggling experience follws:
https://data.caltech.edu/records/1173
A merged VIMS-ISS map of Titan. It is similar to the map projected into globes above.
Phil
That is really nice! Minimizes the seams and artifacts about as well as one could ask for given uneven coverage in the original data. Among other things, I really appreciate the way that Xanadu stands apart from the bright (but not AS bright) terrain to its south and east.
A splendid map indeed. I hope somebody decides to manufacture globes based on that.
Very nice. Where do you get the relief information to generate the shading in those views?
the height data from the SAR footprints closely match the black and white imaging data on a large scale
and seeing as there is no shadowing in the images i used that map( not the new colored map above) as a base to make a normal map
there is a tool for celestia that correctly maps the normals to a sphere ( called "nms" )
but more on that is for the image processing forum
That's as much explanation as I was hoping for, much appreciated. The results are beautiful and entirely plausible.
Thanks a lot JohnVV.
Your renderings are very nice indeed and make Titan looks like a planet taken from our sci-fi TV series of the 60's or 70's (Star Trek and Space : 1999)
I have made an impressionist map of a segment of the T8 radar swath including several of the mountains ridges of central Adiri. The topography is greatly exaggerated for illustrative purposes.
https://www.astro.rug.nl/~oberg/central_adiri.jpg
I used the following sources to help inform the illustration:
- Jason Perry's Titan RADAR SAR Swath's website
- Ian Regan's ISS global map
- Lopes et al. 2019 "A global geomorphologic map of Saturn’s moon Titan"
- Radebaugh et al. 2007 "Mountains on Titan Observed by Cassini Radar"
- Liu et al. 2015 "The tectonics of Titan: Global structural mapping from Cassini RADAR"
Please let me know if anything goes too far beyond artistic liberties and could stand to be corrected.
- Nick Oberg
That's a beautiful piece of work. I hope we will see more!
Phil
The style of this map reminds me of Middle-earth.
That piece about the mountains of Middle Earth doesn't hold up when you look beyond the Americas. Check out Siberia, Iran. the vast region north of India, not to mention the Balkans. As a Tolkien fan from long ago and far away, I don't have a problem with his map...or Titan's mountains. Or especially this new map.
Phil
What an outstanding work of visualization! Great outreach tool, too. Very, very impressive, Nick.
That's stunning, Nick!
Hey, I don't know if any of you remember me but, I used to drop by once in a while asking for stuff like "reprojected maps of Io" etc.
That was back when I had a weaker computer and Google Earth didn't allow maps to cross the international dateline. Ever since then, I have got a better computer and after the lockdown began, I had time to to update my collection of maps and the Google Earth Solar System overlay. I noticed that there was no updated map combining the ISS map with the HiSAR map but I found some separate ones in USGS Astrogeology. What I did was I got the ISS and HiSAR maps and combined them into one map. Then I added color from the Huygens lander images to the whole globe. The image is 16K so it is suitable for both Google Earth and Celestia.
I didn't do any fancy stuff and the noise from the original USGS maps are still there but it was something I wanted to do since the only map combining HiSAR with ISS was from T71 (July 2010) and it's only 11K B/W.
The map is up to date as of T104 (January 2015)
Here s a link to the full size version. (16K)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/60012030@N02/49986587138/in/dateposted-public/
(2K thumbnail)
How could we forget? Many thanks for making and sharing that. New Titan map products are always welcome.
Very nice to see this Antdoghalo. I wonder how it might look if the radar component is overlain on the ISS-based map from Ian Regan?
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=3168&view=findpost&p=240167
https://www.flickr.com/photos/10795027@N08/43023455582/
This was mainly an experimental thing I did (I didn't think my computer was able to even work on it. It took 20 minutes to complete each task of the process over a few hours but the computer pulled through like the little engine that could). I have since noticed there are some other planetary objects where lower resolution data from older spacecraft could be used to fill in unmapped areas like Phoebe, Charon, and Pluto (which you did a good job adding, Albers). One thing I hope eventually does happen is a map gets released showing radar coverage up to T126 in spring 2017, only then can we have the ultimate updated map of Titan until another probe visits.
I could take a shot at combining Ian's map with the USGS radar map later on this summer.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/60012030@N02/49986587138/in/dateposted-public/
Well, I combined them and the shading is a disaster between the two maps. While it is nice to have increased resolution (and see a couple more of the North Polar lakes,) its so bad I wonder if simply inverting the brightness would actually make it look better. My computer was barely able to make this hulking monstrosity after a couple crashes with GIMP. Someone with a much stronger computer would have to dedicate a lot of time to eliminating the brightness inconsistencies.
I've tried to look for an updated RADAR map up to T126 prior to mission's end but I cannot find one. The later swaths not included in this one cover a lot of the unmapped areas.
I don't think inverting the brightness is the solution. Making the radar layer partially transparent (50%, or varied a bit to see how 40 and 60 look) might be a better option.
Phil
Close up of the Selk crater area and a bluish render of the Kraken Sea.....
Here is a near perfect version. (2K thumb of 16K image)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/60012030@N02/50062486346/in/dateposted-public/
While making a map of Mars, I discovered a tool in GIMP that was perfect for this. Now it looks like a normal ISS map at first glance but upon zooming in, one would find this map holds a LOT of surprises!!!
BTW, nice color maps Kymani
Indeed - great to see the surprises!
Recently I have tried to put together an informed but decidedly artistic depiction of the topography of Mayda Insula.
I have used as a basis the relatively low resolution DEM derived from Cassini RADAR stereogrammetry from Kirk et al. 2008. This has been modified to trace apparent dissection of the terrain visible in the T25 and T28 RADAR swaths, as well as the beautifully processed version made available here by Ian. Finally this has been loosely verified by iteratively illuminating the resulting DEM and comparing it with the radar image to try to by-eye match highlights and shadows resulting from the topography. Finally I have convolved the DEM with a gaussian kernel to ensure it is still largely in agreement with the original Kirk et al. elevation model.
All in all it is far from perfect, but it was an interesting exercise and hopefully you will enjoy the result. I include a top-down view of the DEM, an animated gif comparing my illuminated DEM and the RADAR image, and an oblique perspective view of the island (or peninsula, seems hard to find anyone certain about this) with exaggerated elevation.
Very nice, thanks for posting.
I just found this interesting article on the topography of another special place - the Huygens landing site:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2020EA001127
Made a 32K version of my previous Titan map. The sand dunes and individual valleys are easily visible
https://www.flickr.com/photos/60012030@N02/albums/72157717516744806
Now if only the USGS would release a HISAR map with the last 2 years of swaths that would be great.
Thanks for your great ISS-SAR composite Titan map Antdoghalo! It has been a while since I viewed the Titan blog and I am humbled by the advancement made in Titan mapping!
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