Titan | Universe Today

Looking to go somewhere far-flung and exotic? Now is the time to book your excursion, and the Cassini spacecraft has several flyby tours of the moons Titan and Enceladus scheduled for the next few months. Major tour operators say the cost of long-haul flights and summer holidays prices are at an all time low. But with Cassini, you can travel for FREE! just by following the along with Universe Today and the Cassini website. Thrill with some of the closest flybys ever of the mystery moon Titan, and delight in explorations of the geyser plumes of Enceladus. As a special bonus, if you book today, you can experience Saturn's solar equinox, as in August the sun crosses from the southern hemisphere to the north. Wonderful worlds are beckoning – come away starting June 6 with Cassini! It's a worry free vacation. See below for available tour dates! Destination fees do not apply.
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Filed under: Enceladus, Saturn, Titan | 5 Comments »

Think Titan looks pretty round?

Not quite, according to new data released today by the Cassini radar team — and slight irregularities in the shape of the bizarre moon may account for the concentration of lakes at the highest latitudes, among other perplexing features. 

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Filed under: Astronomy, Solar System, Titan | 23 Comments »

Hang on, and enjoy a virtual flyover of Saturn's moon Titan! Data from Cassini's radar instrument have been used to create new flyover maps of Saturn's largest moon. The maps show the topography of Titan in 3-D, and illustrating the height of the 1,200-meter (4,000-foot) mountain tops, the north polar lake country, the vast dunes more than 100 meters (300 feet) high that crisscross the moon, and the thick flows that may have oozed from possible ice volcanoes. "These flyovers let you take in the bird's-eye sweeping views of Titan, the next best thing to being there," said Randy Kirk, from the Science Center at the U.S. Geological Survey, who created the maps.. "We've mapped many kinds of features, and some of them remind me of Earth. Big seas, small lakes, rivers, dry river channels, mountains and sand dunes with hills poking out of them, lava flows." Click the image above to see one of the movies.
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Filed under: Missions, Titan | 7 Comments »

Once every 15 years, Saturn flashes its paper-thin rings in edge-on formation relative to Earth. 

Because the orbits of Saturn's major satellites are in the ring plane, too, this alignment gives astronomers a rare opportunity to capture a spectacular parade of celestial bodies crossing Saturn's surface.

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Scientists have mapped vast dune fields on Titan that may align with the wind on Saturn’s biggest moon — flowing opposite the way climate models had predicted.

The maps, as above, represent four years of radar data collected by the Cassini spacecraft. They reveal rippled dunes that are generally oriented east-west, which means Titan’s winds probably blow toward the east instead of the west. If so, Titan’s surface winds blow opposite the direction suggested by previous global circulation models. On the example above, the arrows indicate the general wind direction. The dark areas without arrows might have dunes but have not yet been imaged. 

“At Titan there are very few clouds, so determining which way the wind blows is not an easy thing, but by tracking the direction in which Titan’s sand dunes form, we get some insight into the global wind pattern,” says Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. “Think of the dunes sort of like a weather vane, pointing us to the direction the winds are blowing.”

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Filed under: Astronomy, Saturn, Titan | 31 Comments »

At a meeting last week between NASA and ESA, the two space agencies narrowed down the choices for the next big flagship planetary missons, which will be joint efforts between the US and Europe. A mission to Jupiter and its four largest moons will be the primary mission the two space agencies will focus on, while they continue to plan for another potential mission to visit Saturn's largest moon Titan and Enceladus. The two missions, the Jupiter System Mission and the Titan Saturn System Mission, are the result of NASA and ESA merging their separate mission concepts.
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Recent pictures from the Cassini spacecraft of Titan's south polar region reveal new lake features not seen in images of the same region taken a year earlier. Extensive cloud systems seen in images covering the area during past year suggest that the new lakes could be the result of a large rainstorm and that lakes on Titan owe their presence, size and distribution to the moon’s weather and changing seasons. But there must also be large underground reservoirs as well of the liquids on Titan. Those liquids aren't water, of course, but super-cold hydrocarbons like methane.
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This is perhaps the coolest thing I've ever seen. Ray Villard, the news director for the Hubble Space Telescope, also writes a blog for Discovery called Cosmic Ray (love that name!) He recently wrote about a dragonfly-like robotic device being developed by the Technical University Delft, Wageningen University in the Netherlands. It's call the ExoFly, and Ray described it as a "dragonfly-on-steroids … a nimble flapping aerobot." It could be the next generation of robotic planetary explorers. It's a small, lightweight autonomous machine capable of flying, hovering, landing and taking off like an insect. Ray says this type of vehicle would "open up a new exploration niches that it not easily reachable by rovers or airborne vehicles on far flung worlds." Actually, it might work best in conjunction with a future big rover, flying ahead to search for interesting or dangerous terrain, and the rover would provide a "landing pad" for the ExoFly's home base. While the ExoFly may be small, its name sounds like a potential super hero, and its capabilities could be in the exploration super hero category, as well.

Take a look at the incredible video of the ExoFly below:
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Filed under: Mars, Titan | 10 Comments »

While browsing through Cassini images of Saturn's moon Titan, astronomer Mike Brown and some colleagues noticed a recurring pattern of clouds appearing over the frigid moon's north pole. While a large, stable cloud has been visible in every image of Titan's north pole obtained since its discovery, Brown noticed bright "knots or streaks" in the cloud that appeared on some images but not others, or changed in images taken hours apart. Brown thought these bright features looked similar to cumulus clouds – or even like thunderheads. But how could tropical-like thunderheads be present on a moon where surface temperatures hover around -178°C (-289°F)? Brown believes these clouds are similar to winter-time lake-effect clouds found on Earth, and are due to convection and condensation occurring in the methane and ethane lakes on Titan.
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Titan not only has an atmosphere it has hydrocarbon lakes, oceans, sand dunes and now research has just been published proving Saturn's moon is sparkling with electrical activity. Scientists are in general agreement that organic molecules, the precursors to life on Earth, are a consequence of lightning in the atmosphere. Now, using data from the Huygens probe that descended through Titan's atmosphere in 2005 and continued transmitting for 90 minutes after touchdown, Spanish scientists have "unequivocally" proven that Titan has electrical storms too. The presence of electrical activity in the atmosphere is causing much excitement as this could mean that organic compounds may be found in abundance on the Titan surface.
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Filed under: Astrobiology, Titan | 33 Comments »

NASA's Cassini mission has detected liquid hydrocarbons on Saturn's moon Titan, in a large, glassy lake near the moon's south pole. Before the Cassini mission began, scientists thought Titan would have global oceans of methane, ethane and other light hydrocarbons. But after more than 40 close flybys of Titan by Cassini, data showed no global oceans exist. However hundreds of dark, lake-like features are present. Until now, it was not known whether these features were liquid or simply dark, solid material. Using Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), which identifies the chemical composition of objects by the way matter reflects light, a liquid ethane lake 235 kilometers (150 miles) long was detected. This makes Titan the only body in our solar system beyond Earth known to have liquid on its surface.
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Even before the Cassini spacecraft entered the Saturn system, scientists were predicting that Saturn’s moon Titan would be quite Earth-like. And every image that’s been returned of Titan’s clouds, lakes, rivers, and other landforms is proving them right. In 2005 Cassini’s imaging radar discovered a massive area of sand dunes around Titan’s equatorial region. Although these dark, windblown dunes look much like sand dunes on Earth, (they’ve been compared to mountainous drifts of coffee grounds) scientists are finding that the dunes are likely made of organic molecules that are not anything at all like sand.
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With each flyby, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been building up the case that there are lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. But now we get the stunning news that the planet might have vast oceans of water and ammonia underneath its surface as well.
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According to new Cassini data, Saturns largest moon, Titan, has "hundreds" times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the liquid fossil fuel deposits on Earth. This is impressive as Titan's 5150 km diameter is only about 50% larger than Earth's Moon and only a little larger than the planet Mercury. Titan's hydrocarbons cycle into the atmosphere, fall as rain and collect in lakes creating massive lakes and dunes.
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Filed under: Astrobiology, Titan | 27 Comments »

If you're planning a visit to Saturn's moon Titan, make sure you bring an umbrella. You'll need it. Not to protect you from water raining down; on frigid Titan, where temperatures dip below 180-degrees Celsius, all the water is completely frozen. No, according to scientists, there's a steady drizzle of liquid methane coming down in the mornings.
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