Titan's surface and atmosphere as seen by the vims hyperspectral imager onboard cassini

摘要

The surface of Titan, the largest icy moon of Saturn, is veiled by a very thick and hazy atmosphere. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer onboard the Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn since July 2004, conducts an intensive survey of Titan with the objective to understand the complex nature of the atmosphere and surface of this mysterious moon, and the way they interact. We review in this paper our long-term monitoring of Titan's surface and atmosphere with the VIMS instrument. We focus on the global mapping of Titan cloud cover and geological units, and discuss the challenging problem of the decorrelation between atmospheric and surface components.