[X] My Assistant

[alan]

Solar system simulator shows an encouter under 500,000 km on June 6. Will there be a good view of the south pole on this pass?

[Phil Stooke]

South pole of Titan... I've stacked four frames and merged them to reduce artifacts and noise. Then four different versions of the composite were processed in different ways (different contrast enhancements, different high pass filters), and all four merged together.

It's very interesting to compare this with the two T0 mosaics... I have a hard time matching this to those... maybe we will be hearing more about this.

Phil

[JRehling]

South pole of Titan... I've stacked four frames and merged them to reduce artifacts and noise.  Then four different versions of the composite were processed in different ways (different contrast enhancements, different high pass filters), and all four merged together.

It's very interesting to compare this with the two T0 mosaics... I have a hard time matching this to those... maybe we will be hearing more about this.

Nice work. There's a bit of detail I saw on Jason's contrast-stretching version that I can't see on the band-passed versions: Especially, a very sinuous (Mississippilike) channel approaching the Peanut.

My overall sense of Titan's topography is that it has numerous local basins that can be filled with liquid to a considerable liquid without overflowing, but beyond that, reach the level of an outflow channel and let liquid flow out as well as in.
I think what we're seeing in this specific image is a bunch of marshes or channel systems (the dark splotches near the clouds) that have recently received rain fill; and, the local basin into which they drain: the peanut-shaped lake. This will endure for a short time before it dries, leaving some darkness (organic sediment, as in the Huygens foreground) in the channel areas and lake bottom.
I myself feel that it's better than chance that a methane cycle with temporary lakes follows the summer pole as the seasons unfold. The question is, does an equatorial flood take place, giving Titan seas, when the winter pole thaws out (if there is any cap there to thaw out)? Which depends upon whether or not the winter pole is 4 degrees K cooler than the Huygens site -- that's what it would take for methane to freeze out there. The northern polar area is certainly that cool at the level of the stratosphere. So the question comes down to: Can Titan's troposphere conduct heat from the lower latitudes to the [winter] polar troposphere, while doing this all "under" the cooler polar stratosphere? If so, wouldn't we get some tremendous weather? Whichever of the two exciting possibilities, it's all happening in the dark!