Xanadu

[miriam_e]

Remember the bright spot on the pictures from the Huygens probe as the robot spacecraft was released from its mothership, the Cassini spacecraft, to plummet down through the atmosphere of Titan? Remember how astonishingly Earthlike Titan looked? Who would have thought that one of Saturn's moons, shrouded in smog, would look so much like our home. We saw rivers and mountains and what looked like an ocean. The bright area in many of the pictures has now been named Xanadu. It is an Australia-sized continent. The Cassini spacecraft has done a radar map of some of the surface -- just a tantalising, thin strip so far, but it is due to do this 29 more times over the next 2 years. I can hardly wait!!!

If you go to the NASA site you can read much more, look at more detailed pictures and a short movie (if you have broadband).
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html