Rev 203 and T100 Mar24-Apr27 '14, 'High Noon' encounter with Titan's Atmosphere Options

[titanicrivers]

A close encounter of the Titan kind will take place on April 7th. Cassini’s instruments will analyze Titan’s upper atmosphere at local noon on Titan in this very close approach. VIMS gets a chance to see a ‘stellar’ occultation of Antares by Titan as well ! See http://www.ciclops.org/view/7859/Rev203?js=1 for all the exciting details of this Rev.

[titanicrivers]

An imaginary view of Titan and Antares from Cassini at 12:45 UTC just before the occultation of the red giant star on April 7th 2014. (The field of view is about 30 degrees and distance to Titan about 17.2K km). Images courtesy JPL’s Solar System Simulator http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/ and the Celestia http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/?source=directory program. The field of view of Cassini's cameras and VIMS is smaller however.

Question: Will the WAC or NAC be able to image the occultation or just VIMS?

[volcanopele]

Looks like a combination of NAC and WAC images in the CB3 and GRN filters.

[titanicrivers]

The T100 flyby description is up. http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/flybys/titan20140407/
Some Rev 203 images from April 1st are posted below.

[titanicrivers]

Where abouts in Dilmun might the ISS closeup be taken? Is the far northeastern portion of Dilmun on this map (below) ??

[Val Klavans]

Great images as always, titanicrivers!

Here are two views I put together from the flyby:


Titan's upper-level haze


Titan Ring
(You can just barely see the south polar vortex!)

[JohnVV]

for any that do not yet know
there is an updated celestia SPICE cassini ssc file
here:
http://forum.celestialmatters.org/viewtopi...?f=18&t=590

[titanicrivers]

Absolutely beautiful imaging Val !!! (ugordon watch out for this ‘newbie’).
I must confess I did not see Antares in the two GRN Cassini ISS raw images.
I also wondered if ISS did see a new N temperate lake on the T100 flyby. The nearest Titan’s WAC camera view (W00088191 from 7.6K km) appeared focused on 30N and 160W (not on the possible lakes mentioned in the recent VIMS abstract). http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2014/pdf/2572.pdf . W000888191 appears near the center (black arrow) of the otherwise narrow angle camera montage below. Image N00222789 (red arrow) appears to show a branching large channel not imaged by ISS before.

[titanicrivers]

The apparent branching linear feature seems to end near Ara Fluctus at 40N and 120W. SAR Ta (1st SAR which includes Genesa Macula) contains this area and shows a mix of geomorphic units including some designated as fluvial valleys and lakes. It’s interesting that this large feature occurs at the same latitude as the ‘Volga River” (our blog given name) branching construct on the other side of Titan around 240W (I think the official name is Uanui Virgae).