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.

Credits: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

When put together, the two different views show more than either does separately. The VIMS team noted the bright region in the image on the left after Cassini's 31 March 2004 Titan encounter.

It seems clear that both instruments are detecting the same basic feature on Titan's surface. This bright patch may be due to an impact event, landslide, cryovolcanism or atmospheric processes. Its distinct colour and brightness suggest that it may have formed relatively recently.

The false-colour image on the left was created using images taken at 1.7 microns (blue), 2.0 microns (green), and 5.0 microns (red). The images that comprise this view were taken by the VIMS instrument on 16 April 2005. Several views were stitched together to make a mosaic. The result was then reprojected to simulate the view from the imaging camera so that the two could be directly compared.

The centre image was taken by the narrow-angle camera on 10 December 2004 using a spectral filter centred at 938 nanometres. The image was taken at a distance of 1.5 million kilometres from Titan and has a pixel scale of 9 kilometres per pixel. The image is centred on 8 degrees south latitude, 112 degrees west longitude. This image has been contrast enhanced and sharpened to improve surface feature visibility.

Credits: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona