Ah, I missed the lunar eclipse. That's probably okay, it was raining last night, making it impossible to see. Titan is pretty. Whenever I think of Titan I think of the Kurt Vonnegut novel The Sirens of Titan.

Oh yeah, Sirens of Titan was a great book. The eclipse was very cool and perfectly fitting for the historic baseball happenings. CF, I like the picture, very pretty. What else can you tell us? What's the blue ring around the edge? I'm sure you and NBH can fill me in.

The false-color image is based on a combination of infrared and ultraviolet imaging. Titan's atmosphere is opaque orange to visible light, so they have to use infrared to see through the clouds to the surface. I believe the ultraviolet is to see the thin upper regions of the the atmosphere (the purple halo in this image).

let's see if my lame html skillz work. Here's a link to the description of this image.

These are the best pictures ever taken of Titan as Cassini passed within 750 miles of the moon a couple of days ago. Turns out that the color filters that voyager had back in the day were exactly the wrong wavelengths to be able to see through Titan's atmosphere, but Cassini's got the right stuff to see into the orange haze.

this is essentially what Titan looks like to the unaided eye.

bah... the second link didn't work. Let's try again:

Orange Titan.

it's a great book, it 'tis. and nbh, thanks for the abundance of information...hehehe