Universe Today » Titan

New Evidence of Seasonal Change on Titan

Nancy Atkinson — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:55:56 +0000

New images of Titan's surface from the Cassini spacecraft show changes which are evidence of seasonal change. Objects identified earlier as liquid hydrocarbon lakes are shrinking and disappearing over the course of one to several Earth years. Scientists say seasonal temperature variations causing evaporation is the most likely cause for the changes observed. Cassini's Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) repeatedly peered through Titan's thick atmosphere, and data show that the lakes exhibit more than an order of magnitude increase in radar return and have disappearing borders between observations, suggesting surface change. These changes cannot be explained without invoking temporal variability, scientists reported at the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences meeting now under way in Fajardo, Puerto Rico.
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Titan's Haze Acts as Ozone Layer

Nancy Atkinson — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:40:09 +0000

Titan appears to be more like Earth all the time, and a new understanding of Titan's hazy atmosphere could provide clues to the evolution of Earth's early atmospheric environment and the development of life on our home planet. Researchers have discovered a series of chemical reactions on Saturn’s largest moon that may shield the moon’s surface from ultraviolet radiation, similar to how Earth’s ozone layer works. The reactions may also be responsible for forming the large organic molecules that compose the moon’s thick and hazy orange atmosphere.
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Fog on Titan? Help Review Mike Brown's Paper

Nancy Atkinson — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:22:52 +0000

Titan is the only place in the solar system other than the earth that appears to have large quantities of liquid sitting on the surface. Granted, conditions on Titan are quite different than on Earth. For one thing, it's a lot colder on Titan and the liquids there are various types of hydrocarbons. "Methane is to Titan what water is to the earth," says astronomer Mike Brown (yes, that guy, of Pluto, Eris and Makemake fame.) But now Brown and his colleagues have discovered another similarity. Titan has fog. "All of those bright sparkly reddish white patches (shown in the image here) are fog banks hanging out at the surface in Titan's late southern summer," Brown wrote in his blog.

Wow.
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Titan's Desert Sports a Surprising, Powerful Storm

Anne Minard — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:03:23 +0000

Titan is just fun. Seems like every other week, another fascinating tidbit emerges about how interesting Saturn's famous moon really is — and how compellingly similar to Earth.

A United States team of astronomers is releasing this image today in Nature. It's an adaptive optics peek at a storm over the wild object's parched, dry desert.

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Titan Shaping Up to Look a Lot Like Pre-Life Earth

Anne Minard — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:54:47 +0000

It's more than a billion kilometers (759 million miles) away, but the more astronomers learn about Titan, the more it looks like Earth.

That's the theme of two talks happening this week at the International Astronomical Union meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Two NASA researchers, Rosaly Lopes and Robert M. Nelson of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are reporting that weather and geology have very similar actions on Earth and Titan — even though Saturn's moon is, on average, 100 degrees C (212 degrees F) colder than Antarctica (and certainly much more frigid than either California or Brazil; lucky astronomers).

The researchers are also reporting a tantalizing clue in the search for life: Titan hosts chemistry much like pre-biotic conditions on Earth.

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Plains of Titan to be Named for "Dune" Novels

Nancy Atkinson — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:39:45 +0000

Titan's mysterious dark plains will be named after planets in the series of "Dune" science fiction novels by author Frank Herbert. The US Geological Survey Astrogeology Science Center announced the first plain or "planitia" given a name will be designated as Chusuk Planitia. Chusuk was a planet from the Dune series, known for its musical instruments. Chusuk Planitia on Titan is located at 5.0S, 23.5W, and in the picture here is the small, dark area next to the "C" of Chusuk.
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Book Your Tours of Titan and Enceladus Today!

Nancy Atkinson — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:04:42 +0000

Now's the time to book your Cassini tour!

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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Titan (Weirdness) is More Than Meets The Eye

Anne Minard — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:00:22 +0000

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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Virtual Fly-Over of Titan

Nancy Atkinson — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:23:33 +0000

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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Hubble Snaps Rare Moon Parade Across Saturn

Anne Minard — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:09:20 +0000

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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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Titan Dunes Turn Climate Models Upside Down

Anne Minard — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:55:48 +0000

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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Next Big Planetary Mission: To Jupiter and Its Moons

Nancy Atkinson — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:43:18 +0000

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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Hydrocarbon Downpours Could Be Creating New Lakes on Titan

Nancy Atkinson — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:26:27 +0000

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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ExoFly: Future Space Exploration Super Hero?

Nancy Atkinson — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:27:40 +0000

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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Lake-Effect Clouds Discovered on Titan

Nancy Atkinson — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 08:05:05 +0000

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 â€“ or even like thunderheads. But how could tropical-like thunderheads be present on a moon where surface temperatures hover around -178Â°C (-289Â°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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Electrical Activity on Titan Confirmed: The Spark for Life?

Ian O'Neill — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 02:54:16 +0000

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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Liquid Lake on Titan Confirmed

Nancy Atkinson — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:46:01 +0000

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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Titanâ€™s Hydrocarbon 'Sand' Dunes

Nancy Atkinson — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:17:51 +0000

Even before the Cassini spacecraft entered the Saturn system, scientists were predicting that Saturnâ€™s moon Titan would be quite Earth-like. And every image thatâ€™s been returned of Titanâ€™s clouds, lakes, rivers, and other landforms is proving them right. In 2005 Cassiniâ€™s imaging radar discovered a massive area of sand dunes around Titanâ€™s equatorial region. Although these dark, windblown dunes look much like sand dunes on Earth, (theyâ€™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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Underground Oceans Discovered on Titan

Fraser Cain — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:56:08 +0000

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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Titan has "Hundreds of Times More" Liquid Hydrocarbons Than Earth

Ian O'Neill — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:32:26 +0000

According to new Cassini data, Saturns largest moon, Titan, has "hundreds" times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the liquid fossil fuel depositsÂ 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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Titan has Drizzling Methane Rain

Fraser Cain — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:08:36 +0000

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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Coastal Scene on Titan

Fraser Cain — Thu, 24 May 2007 23:24:54 +0000

Take a look at the image attached to this story. If you didn't know any better, you'd think you were looking at a rugged coastline somewhere on Earth. Maybe some island in the Mediterranean, or Norwegian fjord. Nope, you're looking at a completely alien world: Titan.
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Organic Chemicals Discovered in Titan's High Atmosphere

Fraser Cain — Fri, 11 May 2007 21:07:42 +0000

Since the twin Voyager spacecraft flew past Saturn's moon Titan, Scientists have been excited about what its hazy atmosphere can tell us about the earliest days of our own planet. The Voyagers discovered that Titan's atmosphere is swirling with hydrocarbons and other complex organic molecules that could be the building blocks of life. The latest findings from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have uncovered these organic molecules floating higher in Titan's atmosphere than scientists originally thought possible.
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Massive Mountain Range Seen on Titan

Fraser Cain — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 01:50:46 +0000

New images of Titan sent back by NASA's Cassini spacecraft show a large mountain range, extending about 150 km (93 miles) long. The mountains were seen on Cassini's most recently flyby on October 25, 2006, where the spacecraft captured the highest resolution infrared views of Saturn's largest moon. They reach about 1.5 km (almost 1 mile) high, and they're probably made of icy material, and coated with many layers of organic material.
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The Early Earth's Atmosphere was Similar to Titan

Fraser Cain — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 01:55:17 +0000

The thick organic haze that shrouds Titan is similar to what we had here on Earth billions of years ago; an environment that might have helped early life get a foothold. NASA researchers set up several experiments that reproduced the atmosphere in the early Earth and Titan today. The Earth experiments produced tremendous amounts of organic material, which could have been one of the ways life first appeared.
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