[X] My Assistant

[stephenv2]

I've not be able to find a good answer to this question. High resolution visible light images of all the major moons of Saturn seem to exist but I don't see anything much over 500 pixels and not very usuable. I desperately need one for my film. I realize that the hazy world may make it seems there is not much science value in this but I'm not 100% convinced of that. Plus, I suspect a really high resolution image (say a 16-image one) would be well worth the cost from a PR viewpoint and perhaps it would reveal some interesting info as well.

I have not found any real orbital/mission reason it could not be done before Cassini is finished. Anyone have any insight?

[volcanopele]

The biggest problem with creating a high-resolution visible color mosaic of Titan is the blandness of Titan's atmosphere. It would be difficult to piece the images together properly if there are no real features to set as control points. And as you point out, the science basis for using all that data volume is pretty limited.

Now, I can definitely see taking more single frame visible color images. I wonder if there is enough data volume available to splice them into out cloud monitoring observations.

[stephenv2]

The biggest problem with creating a high-resolution visible color mosaic of Titan is the blandness of Titan's atmosphere. It would be difficult to piece the images together properly if there are no real features to set as control points.

Sure, a little challenging but certainly not a reason not to do it. I would enjoy putting that mosaic together myself. I think the real issue is per the mission planning. I mean Titan is the moon we landed on - yet we don't have good photograph. Does this have anything to do with the general public's general ignorance of Huygens? This reminds of Apollo 8 and lack of planned photographs of earth. Fortunately, astronaunts with cameras were aboard and took perhaps some of the most important pictures in history.

I know if Cassini were manned we'd have a ton of nice photos of Titan. I think it's important that we get a least one before Cassini leaves.

[ugordan]

You're not missing out on much. At low phase angles, Titan is just a fuzzball as almost all haze structure in visible light is invisible. You could get away with just massively enlarging a smaller image and filtering it a bit - like this one. Compare to this shot of the south pole at native resolution - no structure visible either, at the very least it's lost in 8bit color banding.

For high phase, crescent views, things are a bit different and you would be actually able to see more details with a higher resolution shot as opposed to a distant snapshot. Even then, mostly over the north pole (in this Titan season).