Seasonal differences seen in global haze over Titan

Cassini-Huygens reveals seasonal differences in the global haze that envelopes Titan in this narrow-angle camera image taken on 24 October 2004.

The picture was taken through a filter sensitive to strong absorption by methane gas (wavelengths centred at 889 nanometres). Here, the northern hemisphere of Titan is notably brighter than the southern hemisphere, because there is more haze in the north. The haze distribution was reversed, north to south, in observations taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope from 1994 to 2000.

The image was taken from a distance of 1.08 million kilometres from Titan. The image scale is 6.52 kilometres per pixel.