NASA : Specular Spectacular .- Reflejo Espectacular...................

Hola amigos : A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., la Agencia Espacial NASA, nos informa sobre diferentes vistas captadas al satélite Titan de Saturno... NASA  nos dice.............."Esta vista en infrarrojo cercano, mosaico de color captada de la nave espacial Cassini de la NASA muestra el sol brillando fuera de los mares polares del norte de Titán. Mientras que Cassini ha captado, por separado, vistas de los mares polares (ver PIA17470) y el sol brillando fuera de ellos (ver PIA12481 y PIA18433) en el pasado, esta es la primera vez que ambos han sido vistos juntos en la misma vista.............

El reflejo solar, también llamado un reflejo especular, es el área brillante cerca de la posición de las 11 en punto de la parte superior izquierda. Esto como un espejo de reflexión, conocido como el punto de especular, es en el sur del mar más grande de Titán, Kraken Mare, al norte de la isla de un archipiélago que separa dos partes separadas del mar.................

 

Este sunglint particular era tan brillante como para saturar el detector de infrarrojos y Espectrómetro de Mapeo (VIMS) instrumento visual de la Cassini, que captura la vista. Es también el sunglint visto con la elevación más alta de observación hasta el momento - el sol fue un total de 40 grados sobre el horizonte como se ve desde Kraken Mare en este momento - mucho mayor que los 22 grados visto en PIA18433. Debido a que era tan brillante, este destello fue visible a través de la neblina en longitudes de onda mucho más bajos que antes, hasta 1,3 micras.............

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Specular Spectacular

This near-infrared, color mosaic from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows the sun glinting off of Titan's north polar seas. While Cassini has captured, separately, views of the polar seas (see PIA17470) and the sun glinting off of them (see PIA12481 and PIA18433) in the past, this is the first time both have been seen together in the same view.

The sunglint, also called a specular reflection, is the bright area near the 11 o'clock position at upper left. This mirror-like reflection, known as the specular point, is in the south of Titan's largest sea, Kraken Mare, just north of an island archipelago separating two separate parts of the sea.

This particular sunglint was so bright as to saturate the detector of Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument, which captures the view. It is also the sunglint seen with the highest observation elevation so far -- the sun was a full 40 degrees above the horizon as seen from Kraken Mare at this time -- much higher than the 22 degrees seen in PIA18433. Because it was so bright, this glint was visible through the haze at much lower wavelengths than before, down to 1.3 microns.

The southern portion of Kraken Mare (the area surrounding the specular feature toward upper left) displays a "bathtub ring" -- a bright margin of evaporate deposits -- which indicates that the sea was larger at some point in the past and has become smaller due to evaporation. The deposits are material left behind after the methane & ethane liquid evaporates, somewhat akin to the saline crust on a salt flat.

The highest resolution data from this flyby -- the area seen immediately to the right of the sunglint -- cover the labyrinth of channels that connect Kraken Mare to another large sea, Ligeia Mare. Ligeia Mare itself is partially covered in its northern reaches by a bright, arrow-shaped complex of clouds. The clouds are made of liquid methane droplets, and could be actively refilling the lakes with rainfall.

The view was acquired during Cassini's August 21, 2014, flyby of Titan, also referred to as "T104" by the Cassini team.

The view contains real color information, although it is not the natural color the human eye would see. Here, red in the image corresponds to 5.0 microns, green to 2.0 microns, and blue to 1.3 microns. These wavelengths correspond to atmospheric windows through which Titan's surface is visible. The unaided human eye would see nothing but haze, as in PIA12528.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The VIMS team is based at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

More information about Cassini is available at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/University of Idaho

 

NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

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