The Cassini mission to Saturn has been bountiful with the gorgeous pictures in the past — including one gorgeous shot that wound up in the last Star Trek movie. But these newly released images of Titan might be the most arresting Cassini pictures yet.
As Cassini's Carolyn Porco writes in an announcement of these images, Titan is "the only moon in the solar system with a substantial atmosphere. A couple of Saturn's stark, airless, icy moons also appears in these scenes, seeming to dangle beside Titan's orange orb. The atmosphere of Titan is of great interest because of its similarities to the atmosphere believed to exist long ago on the early Earth."
The picture above shows the smaller moon Tethys peeping out from behind the hazy, more colorful Titan. Check out more of the beautiful new pictures here, and click over to Cassini's site for more info.
According to NASA, "These views from NASA's Cassini spacecraft look toward the south polar region of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and show a depression within the moon's orange and blue haze layers near the south pole."
A bit of an optical illusion — Saturn's third largest moon, Dione, looks bigger than the largest moon, Titan, because of perspective.
Titan passes in front of Saturn and its rings.
Titan in front of Dione, and the two of them in front of Saturn.