Excitement and puzzlement as Cornell students and researchers view first Titan images Jan. 14

Viewers at the Space Sciences Building watch a clip of the Cassini-Huygens launch on NASA-TV Jan. 14 while awaiting the first images of Saturn's moon, Titan, as the probe sent data after landing on its surface. Kevin Stearns/University Photography

By Larry Klaes

The first image of the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, taken by the Huygens space probe was shown to the world at 2:55 p.m. Jan. 14. The saucer-shaped probe had separated from the Cassini Saturn orbiter Dec. 24. The raw, unprocessed image -- taken as the probe parachuted through the orange, murky atmosphere -- showed what appeared to be drainage channels flowing into a dark, featureless region.

"Mudslides!" was among the verbal reactions from those present in the third-floor Spacecraft Imaging Facility (SPIF) conference room in the Space Sciences Building. Indeed, it was not hard to imagine that the scene depicted rivers flowing into a large body of liquid, complete with shoreline and nearby islands.

"This high-altitude photo looks a lot like the runoff channels we have seen on Mars," offered astronomy graduate student Britt Scharringhausen.

The comments amid the frissons of excitement as new images from above Titan and then on its surface came up on the screen via NASA-TV lasted for much of the day. Members of the campus community and the general public crowded into the building -- courtesy of the Department of Astronomy and Rick Kline, SPIF's data manager -- and shared the rare experience of seeing a totally alien world for the first time through the electronic eyes and instruments of Huygens.

The open house, which had been widely publicized, brought parents and children, students, faculty and even President Jeffrey Lehman to witness the historic unveiling of images from Titan. Also occasionally present, and inevitably bombarded with questions, were some Cornell members of the science team for the Cassini spacecraft, which went into a Saturn orbit on June 30, 2004. Team members include Joseph Burns, the Irving Porter Church Professor of Engineering, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, professor of astronomy and Cornell's vice provost for physical sciences and engineering; Joseph Veverka, professor and chair of the Department of Astronomy; astronomy professors Steve Squyres, Peter Gierasch and Philip Nicholson; and Peter Thomas, senior researcher in astronomy.

The first picture from the surface of Saturn's moon Titan, one of the biggest moons in the solar system, was unveiled by the European Space Agency Jan. 14. The raw, unprocessed image shows the surface of Titan with blocks of what may be ice strewn around. NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Cornell's scientists on the Cassini mission use the two main cameras that take wide and narrow angles of Saturn and its rings and moons, the composite infrared spectrometer and the visible and infrared mapping spectrometer.

During the morning, the European Space Agency (ESA), which is largely responsible for the Huygens probe, officially announced that the 700-pound vehicle had successfully landed on the moon's bitterly cold surface. Huygens then returned data for nearly two hours from the ground via the Cassini probe orbiting Saturn, much longer than the three to 30 minutes originally anticipated. The images took more than an hour to travel across 750 million miles of interplanetary space.

The first image from Titan's surface, a black-and-white picture showing rounded ice boulders extending across a relatively flat surface to the horizon, surprised some Cornell watchers. "Titan's surface seems to have similar qualities to what we have seen on the surface of Mars," suggested Justin Wick, a Cornell undergraduate who wrote the software for the mission planning lists of another space mission with Cornell involvement, the Mars rover mission. Burns later noted that the Huygens images gave further evidence that Titan has a "totally bizarre landscape. Given that this is an image of an extraterrestrial surface, it appears fairly mundane. But it's actually spectacular because it's a surface composed of possibly unusual materials at -200 degrees Centigrade in an organic-rich atmosphere 10 times denser, yet it looks like some desert in the Southwest."

As more images of Titan were scheduled to be shown at 5 p.m., the open house crowd became so large that the presentation was moved to a larger room on the first floor.

"This is a testament the ability of people around the world to join together in a collaborative venture," said Lehman after seeing the images.

Matt Hedman, a postdoctoral researcher who has been working with Burns on the images from Cassini, summed up in two words what most people were thinking about the images from Titan: "Happily confused."