The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument on board the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft has found an unusual bright, red spot on Titan.
This dramatic colour (but not true colour) image was taken during the 16 April 2005 encounter with Titan. North is to the right. In the centre it shows the dark lanes of the H-shaped feature discovered from Earth and first seen by Cassini last July shortly after it arrived in the Saturn system.
At the south-western edge of the H feature, near Titan's limb (edge), is an area roughly 500 kilometres (300 miles) across. That area is 50 percent brighter, when viewed using light with a wavelength of 5 microns, than the bright continent-sized area known as Xanadu.
Xanadu extends to the north-west of the bright spot, beyond the limb (edge) of Titan in this image. Near the terminator (the line between day and night) at the bottom of this image is the 80-kilometre-wide crater that has been previously seen by Cassini's radar, imaging cameras and VIMS.
This colour image was created from separate images in the 1.7 micron (blue), 2.0 micron (green), and 5.0 micron (red) spectral windows through which it is possible to see Titan's surface. The yellow that humans see has a wavelength of about 0.5 microns, so the colours shown are between 3 and 10 times more red than the human eye can detect.