Titan Data Atlas

All products

ProcessedResearcher

Titan SAR Data

The full archive of Cassini radar maps of Titan, plus outlines showing where each radar swath landed.

In plain words

Cassini mapped Titan's surface with its radar instrument. This archive holds the USGS Digital Map Products made from those radar passes: single-pass images, global mosaics, radiometry, scatterometry, topography and a few stereo terrain models. A separate small download gives one outline shapefile per flyby, so you can see which pass covers your area before you download anything large.

Good for: start from the original radar swaths; check which radar passes cover a place.

Open it in your GIS

ArcGIS Pro

After a conversion Needs one conversion step first. The steps say how.

  1. Download Titan_SAR_swath_outlines.zip first to find the flybys that cover your area.
  2. Extract the zip into one folder.
  3. On the Map tab, in the Layer group, click Add Data, then click Browse.
  4. Select swath_outlines_all.shp and click OK.
  5. Note the flyby numbers that cross your area of interest.
  6. Open https://data.astro.cornell.edu/RADAR/DATA/ and find the product folder you need.
  7. Download the .IMG.gz file and its matching .LBL file for each flyby.
  8. Decompress each .IMG.gz file with a tool such as 7-Zip.
  9. Keep each .IMG file in the same folder as its .LBL file.
  10. Add the .LBL or .IMG file to the map with Add Data.
  • Titan is a sphere of radius 2,575 km. Do not let ArcGIS Pro treat the data as Earth (WGS 1984).
  • The swath outline shapefiles carry a .prj for GCS_Titan_2000. In the map's Coordinate Systems tab, search for Titan 2000 (Esri WKID 104943) under the Solar System geographic coordinate systems.
  • Esri lists PDS version 3 as read-only and names only 16-bit signed integer as the supported data type. Some radar products may not open; convert them with GDAL if needed.
  • The full archive is one 92 GB file. Download single products from the DATA folder instead.

QGIS

After a conversion Needs one conversion step first. The steps say how.

  1. Download Titan_SAR_swath_outlines.zip and extract it into one folder.
  2. Select Layer > Add Layer > Add Vector Layer.
  3. Select swath_outlines_all.shp and click Add.
  4. Note the flyby numbers that cross your area of interest.
  5. Download the matching .IMG.gz and .LBL files from https://data.astro.cornell.edu/RADAR/DATA/.
  6. Decompress each .IMG.gz file and keep it next to its .LBL file.
  7. Select Layer > Add Layer > Add Raster Layer.
  8. Select the .LBL or .IMG file and click Add.
  9. Check the layer CRS in Layer Properties, on the Source tab.
  • Titan is a sphere of radius 2,575 km. Do not assign EPSG:4326 (WGS 84) to these layers.
  • QGIS reads PDS3 images through GDAL. If a layer has no CRS, select Layer > Set CRS of Layer(s) and choose a Titan CRS.
  • To make a Titan CRS, select Settings > Custom CRS (Custom Projections in older versions) and paste the WKT from a swath outline .prj file.
  • The three stereo DTMs in the DTM folder are gzipped ISIS3 cubes. Decompress them before you add them.

JMARS

Not confirmed Nobody has confirmed this tool opens it yet.

  1. Select Titan in the JMARS body list, if your version offers it.
  2. Download and decompress the product you need from https://data.astro.cornell.edu/RADAR/DATA/.
  3. Convert the PDS3 image to TIFF or PNG with GDAL or QGIS if JMARS does not accept it.
  4. Make sure the file is smaller than 512 MB and has no alpha band.
  5. Click Add New Layer, then click Advanced Map.
  6. Click Upload Map in the Available Maps section.
  7. Enter the file path, then type a name for the map.
  8. Select global or regional, and type the latitude and longitude bounding box.
  9. Type an ignore value for blank pixels if the image has them.
  • JMARS support for Titan is not confirmed. The JMARS FAQ lists a Titan radius of 2,576 km, but no JMARS page we found confirms Titan as a selectable body.
  • JMARS custom maps accept ISIS cub, Vicar, JPEG, TIFF, PNG or PNM files up to 512 MB, without alpha bands.
  • JMARS uses 2,576 km for Titan; the Cornell products use 2,575 km. Expect small position differences.

Titan products here are referenced to a sphere of radius 2,575 km. If your GIS asks for a coordinate system, pick a Titan sphere, never an Earth one, and check the product's own label or .prj file first.

Converted sample

No converted sample for this product yet. Use the download or the full dataset links instead.