NASA's Cassini Researchers Identify Titan's Tallest Peaks
Posted on March 26, 2016
Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have identified the highest point on Saturn's moon Titan. The tallest peak on Titan is located in a trio of mountainous ridges called the Mithrim Montes. The peak is 10,948 feet (3,337 meters) high. It is located midway on the lower of the three ridges in the radar image above.
The researchers used a radar instrument (the Raddar Mapper) on Cassini to locate the peak. The instrument can pear through the smog of Titan's atmosphere to reveal surface data. A technique called despeckling was used for handling noise in the Cassini radar images. The results were presented at the 47th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
Stephen Wall, deputy lead of the Cassini radar team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says in a statement, "It's not only the highest point we've found so far on Titan, but we think it's the highest point we're likely to find."
NASA calls the discovery a "nod to extraterrestrial mountaineers of the future." You can find a hi-res version of the above image here.
