NASA has released a composite photo of Saturn's moon Titan, created from images gathered by the Cassini space probe during an approach last month.
Using instruments at wavelengths below that of visible light allowed a view of Titan's surface beneath its obscuring, hazy atmosphere, NASA scientists explain.
That allowed a view of features on Titan such as dunes and craters, they say.
Flying by the moon at a relatively distant 6,200 miles allowed Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) instrument to obtain moderate-resolution views of large areas.
Although the released photo shows Titan in an intriguing shade of bluish green, that's false color, NASA researchers point out in a NASA release, representing the wavelengths of light captured by VIMS; blue at 1.3 microns, green at 2.0 microns and red at 5.0 microns.
Visible light is in the region of 0.5 microns.
The view in the released image is mostly the hemisphere of Titan that faces toward Saturn, NASA says.
Titan is half as large in diameter as Earth's moon, and is the solar system's only moon found with a dense atmosphere and evidence of permanent bodies of liquid on its surface.
It is the second-largest moon in the solar system after Jupiter's Ganymede.
Visible in the image is the best view ever obtained of Menrva, the largest confirmed impact crater on Titan.
There are not many such impacts on Titan, suggesting a relatively young surface that has likely been smoothed by winds, flowing liquids and tectonic processes similar to those seen on Earth.
However, at Titan's surface temperature of minus 179 degrees Celsius, any water present would be hard as rock, and the liquid falling as rain and collecting in permanent lakes is methane.
Also visible in the NASA image are darker, dune-filled regions named Fensal toward the north and Aztlan to the south, parallel to each other in the shape of a sideways letter "H."
The Cassini mission, a cooperative effort of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which maintains a mission website for the public.
