It’s been over a year since the Huygens (that’s pronounced hoy-gens) probe landed on Saturn’s moon Titan, penetrating for the first time the opaque clouds that have hidden Titan’s surface. Scientists have now released a pair of videos, created from a vast number of still images, to let us share the view as Huygens descended. They’re about 5 minutes long, and well worth a look.
You can read an article about it on space.com, which will help you to understand what you’re seeing.
The first video, View from Huygens, gives the best view, with narration. (I couldn’t hear the narration the first time I played it, but when I replayed it, for some reason it came on. Oh, and you have to watch an ad for space.com before the video comes on.)
The second, Descent with Bells and Whistles, is more SFnal, with lots of squeaks and funny noises, but harder to understand. (I wish they had a larger version available, because it has lots of telemetry stuff around the image, but too small to be very readable.)
Huygens turned up evidence of flowing liquid methane, but I’m still waiting for pictures of methane lakes!
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