Well, if that image was taken from an elevation of 2 feet rather than several kilometers, I will look rather silly, but if someone has a better explanation than drainage patterns, I am listening.

Here is a picture from the surface:

First image from Titan

We have a surface level side image going up at UTI any sec.

Yep, the first image was taken during the descent:

Huygens at Titan 2
January 14, 2005

This is one of the first raw, or unprocessed, images from the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe as it descended to Saturn’s moon Titan. It was taken with the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer, one of two NASA instruments on the probe.

Much more on Huygens pictures at Unscrewing the Inscrutable.

Look close enough and you can see the images of John, Paul, George and Ringo. ;-)

That is just so cool.

The rocks or ice chunks or whatever look pretty polished on the top surface. I’d guess we’re seeing a layer of floating scum, looks like maybe open ‘ocean’ or sludge plains in the foreground.

Raw images at http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/data.htm. We’ll have some of the better ones up in a jiffy.

Check out number two Exquisite!

Man, I’m at a loss for words. Awesome.

Damn. I’m not getting my work done today because the Titan stuff is so interesting. It’s also great for people on both sides of the evolution/ID debate to be standing in awe of the pictures together. {group hug}

Well, if that image was taken from an elevation of 2 feet rather than several kilometers, I will look rather silly, but if someone has a better explanation than drainage patterns, I am listening.

Well, you could start here.

[ducks!]

Yeah, lots more images. Rivers and ocean, or frozen versions thereof.

#$%@#$%#$% can’t edit posts, can’t insert hyphens in URLS, how far am I suppoed to go for a joke?

alleged photo from Titan

photo from Kansas

Nick-
For some of the images that show the beautiful drainage patterns, have you been able to find out anything about the scale of what they are showing?

Doug,

I could be wrong (I’ve been up for two days}. I believe the ESA said most of the ariel shots are in the range of one pixel to 10-40 meters. Dunno about the side shots yet.

Yeah, they were taken during the parachute descent, so they must be a kilometer or two up at least.

Hey, I think I see an outline of the Holy Mother!

Since the above link has 404 errors instead of raw images:

Give me hundreds of raw images

The images are out of order.

Nice to see the Europeans wised up and fairly quickly released raw images. It was not plan a few days ago.

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I think the Mars rovers have spoiled me.

I WANT MORE PICTURES!

All those raw pictures seem to be differently calibrated views of the same thing, or some such.

Jon H wrote:

I think the Mars rovers have spoiled me.

I WANT MORE PICTURES!

All those raw pictures seem to be differently calibrated views of the same thing, or some such.

No they don’t. Look again. Skip to the 500s. Remember what I said about them being out of order?

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Look at this one for example

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Update: 9:53 EST Good review of the Surface Science Package or SSP. Surface temp is a balmy -180 C. Titan has something like a tropopause with a min temp of -200 C at an altitude of 50 kms and possibly a thermocline/ dense cloud layer; ghostly sonic reflections were received from several kms above the surface. Penotrameter data suggests Huygens may have landed in a soft slurry of methane and or water ices with a thin fragile crust. Huygens tilt data indicates a rest angle of about 20 degrees off level, and rock solid steady; no bobbing or wave action.

Update: ESA Systems Science, Damstadt Germany, 6:03 EST AM Jan 15. Data indicates the presence of water ice, methane, ethane, acetylene, and ‘possibly’ other, heavier, hydrocarbons on the surface. In the side-surface shot in the previous frame (see photo two, side-surface view), the objects (ice blocks) are in the 10-20 cm range; they are fairly close to Huygens; the DISR is approximately 40 cm above the surface looking down and out at them at an angle of perhaps 30-45 degrees off level. Optical band wavelength data presented suggests the surface color is a bright yellow with perhaps a touch of orange; almost looks like the hue of raw sulfur in places.

NASA wrote:

This is one of the first raw images returned by the ESA Huygens probe during its successful descent. It was taken from an altitude of 16.2 kilometres with a resolution of approximately 40 metres per pixel. It apparently shows short, stubby drainage channels leading to a shoreline.

16.2k and a resolution of about 40 metres per pixel.

The surface in color

(Usual disclaimer: camera does not see the same way you do so the colors might not be completely “correct.”)

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Composite view at the ESA site:

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/inde…

What a picture. Can’t wait for more.

Udate: 1:52 EST. Rough mosiacs and color pic from ESA via The Two Perecnt Company Rants.

Let me be the first to put forward the theory that Titan and Earth descended from a common ancestor.

ROFL!

I kill me sometimes.

DaveScot:

I think Velikovsky beat you to it.

DaveScot wrote:

I kill me sometimes.

Don’t get GWW’s hopes up.

DaveScot wrote:

Let me be the first to put forward the theory that Titan and Earth descended from a common ancestor.

Umm you are way late. Astronomers, cosmologists etc have been saying just this for decades. The Earth and Titan both come from the same halo that surrounded our sun early in the solar system’s formation ~6 billion years ago. Those elements formed from a massive supernova that exploded a bit further in the past. But then you can deny that any systems out there where created via GAs so I’m sure you can deny this too. Please talk to David Heddle if you are in doubt about radiometric dating etc.

fricken awesome. some of the ones from the decent look like you could add some greens, blues and golds hues and make it look just like flying over an earthly coastline. awesome.

now were are the lgm?