Planetary Duet

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, dances around the giant planet in this recent image from the Cassini spacecraft. Titan's surface is concealed beneath a veil of orange "smog." Cassini's instruments can peer through the haze, however, to see lakes of liquid methane and ethane, river channels, giant sand dunes, and possible ice volcanoes. In this view, the big moon lines up with Saturn's rings, which cast dark shadows on the planet's southern hemisphere. A thin white band in the northern hemisphere is the remains of a giant storm that completely encircled the planet in 2011. The edges of both Titan and Saturn appear a bit fuzzy because this image was compiled from several pictures snapped through different filters, which were taken a few minutes apart. [NASA/JPL/SSI/J.Major]