Titan: How NASA Got the Clearest Photo Ever of Saturn's Moon
Saturn's freezing moon Titan is seen in a new image from NASA.
— -- NASA has released the clearest view yet of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, which has long been thought to have the potential to harbor life.
Over the past decade, the Cassini mission has been using its cameras to probe Titan and send back images of the moon's diverse terrain, ranging from sand dunes to hydrocarbon seas.
While the discoveries have been impressive, electronic noise has always clouded the images, giving them a grainy look.
Antoine Lucas, who worked with Cassini's radar team when he was a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology, had the idea to use a new technique called "despeckling," according to NASA, which allowed the team to produce clearer images by suppressing electronic noise.
"It takes a lot of computation, and at the moment quite a bit of 'fine-tuning' to get the best results with each new image, so for now we'll likely be despeckling only the most important -- or most puzzling -- images," Randy Kirk, a Cassini radar team member, said in a statement.
With better views of Titan, researchers will now be able to better study the mysterious moon and the processes that shaped its unique terrain into what it is today.
