Cassini takes a close look at Titan (again)

[Rick]

Cassini and Titan: Radar discovers Space Arabia

The European Space Agency's and NASA's Saturn mission has beamed back images of shifting dunes on the surface of the giant moon Titan (see right). Cassini's radar imager found the Earth-like desert landscapes dominating huge swathes of the moon's surface near the equator.

The dunes are up to 150m high and can span hundreds of kilometres, according to researchers reporting in Science.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/05/titan_dunes/

[Rick]

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has snapped a mile-high mountain range on Saturn's moon Titan, the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced yesterday.

Titan's sierra - possibly capped with methane "snow" - runs just to the south of the moon's equator for around 150km (93 miles). It's about 30km (19 miles) wide and reaches 1.5km into Titan's atmosphere.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/13/titanic_sierra/

The horse's mouth: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press-release-details.cfm?newsID=709

[Whitters]

A giant cloud half the size of the United States has been imaged on Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft. The cloud may be responsible for the material that fills the lakes discovered last year by Cassini's radar instrument.

More at:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/SEMP7VSMTWE_0.html

[Rick]

Nasa's Cassini probe has found evidence for seas, probably filled with liquid hydrocarbons, at the high northern latitudes of Saturn's moon Titan.

The dark features, detected by Cassini's radar, are much bigger than any lakes already detected on Titan.

The largest is some 100,000 sq km (39,000 sq miles) - greater in extent than North America's Lake Superior.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6449081.stm

[Rick]

Scientists were dismayed when, as they watched the Huygens probe fall to the surface on Saturn's moon Titan, one of its key experiments failed.

At the time, it looked like vital science would be lost, but now, after two years of painstaking reconstruction, the teams have been able to piece together an astonishingly detailed picture of the moon, its surface, and atmosphere.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/04/titan_data_still/

[Rick]

This week, Cassini's travels will bring it by Saturn's moon Tethys (June 27) and Titan (June 29). Cassini will get a close-up look at the large crater Odysseus, which is 450 kilometers (280 miles) in diameter, and Ithaca Chasma, a canyon that is four times as long as Earth's Grand Canyon. Scientists are studying how this canyon formed and whether Tethys was active in the past, like Enceladus is currently.

Scientists will also obtain close-up images of mysterious dark patches on the moon, and they will be taking data to understand what the surface is made of.

See: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/events/t33-tethys/index.cfm

[Rick]

Saturn's moon Titan may have a deep, hidden ocean, according to data published in the journal Science.

Radar images from the Cassini-Huygens mission reinforce predictions that a reservoir of liquid water exists beneath the thick crust of ice.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7307584.stm

[Rick]

If worlds have shadow twins elsewhere in the Universe, then Earth's would appear to lie just a block or two down the cosmic road, in orbit around Saturn.

"We have on Titan many of the geological features that we find on Earth," enthuses Rosaly Lopes.

"We find volcanism, we find tectonics, we find erosion and deposition, and wind activity forming dunes.

"It's very similar to the Earth."

But there is a crucial difference: Titan is so cold that most of the water is solid.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7350100.stm

[mickw]

When the Cassini spacecraft reached Saturn's largest moon Titan and deployed its Huygens probe to study the surface, it lifted a shroud that had hung over a world possibly containing conditions for life's building blocks.

Now a planetary scientist and an astronomy writer have laid out Cassini's findings and Titan's enduring mysteries in a new book, "Titan Unveiled" (Princeton University Press, 2008).

More:  http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080616-mm-titan-unveiled.html

[Rick]

Scientists are drafting a plan to further explore Saturnian moon Titan, involving an orbiting spacecraft, surface probe and hot-air balloon designed to float gracefully through the body's hazy hydrocarbon atmosphere, Space.com reports.

Titan has to date revealed some of its secrets to the Cassini spacecraft and Huygens probe, including liquid hydrocarbon lakes and some turbulent atmospheric conditions.

However, while Cassini's radar and infrared instruments have offered tantalising glimpses of Titan, much remains to be explored.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/12/titan_ballooning_trip/

[Rick]

An American scientist believes he may have come up with an explanation for the curious lakes of liquefied petroleum gas found at the polar regions of Titan, moon of Saturn. It could be because Titan is not spherical, but has a liquid layer which is.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/07/titan_lpg_lakes_theory/

[mickw]

There are hundreds of millions of miles of the void of space between climate scientists and Saturn's frigid moon Titan. But in spite of the distance, the scientists nearly got it right when they made a model of the moon's climate. The only thing off was the timing.

Scientists found that the way clouds are distributed around Titan mostly matches their models. Contrary to predictions, however, clouds still have not dissipated from the southern hemisphere as the moon's fall season approaches.

"Titan's clouds don't move with the seasons exactly as we expected," Sebastien Rodriguez of the University of Paris Diderot, who works with the Cassini mission, said in a statement.

More:   http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090609-titan-clouds.html

[mickw]

A tropical storm was not what astronomers expected to see when they pointed their telescopes toward the equator of Saturn's moon Titan last summer.

But that's exactly what they found on this beguiling moon, home to a weather system both eerily familiar and perplexingly strange. The discovery was announced today.

In many ways Titan's climate resembles that of Earth, but instead of a water cycle, Titan has a methane cycle. Clouds, rain and lakes all exist on Titan, but they are all made of methane. In the moon's frigid climate, any water is frozen into rock-hard ice.

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090812-titan-clouds.html

[Rick]

(CNN) -- NASA scientists revealed Friday a first-of-its-kind image from space showing reflecting sunlight from a lake on Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

It's the first visual "smoking gun" evidence of liquid on the northern hemisphere of the moon, scientists said, and the first-ever photo from another world showing a "specular reflection" -- which is reflection of light from an extremely smooth surface and in this case, a liquid one.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/12/18/saturn.titan.reflection/index.html

[Rick]

Cassini Halloween Treat: Titan Glows in the Dark

A literal shot in the dark by imaging cameras on NASA's Cassini spacecraft has yielded an image of a visible glow from Titan, emanating not just from the top of Titan's atmosphere, but also - surprisingly - from deep in the atmosphere through the moon's haze. A person in a balloon in Titan's haze layer wouldn't see the glow because it's too faint - something like a millionth of a watt. Scientists were able to detect it with Cassini because the spacecraft's cameras are able to take long-exposure images.

"It turns out that Titan glows in the dark - though very dimly," said Robert West, the lead author of a recent study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and a Cassini imaging team scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's a little like a neon sign, where electrons generated by electrical power bang into neon atoms and cause them to glow. Here we're looking at light emitted when charged particles bang into nitrogen molecules in Titan's atmosphere."

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-344

[Rick]

Cassini Data: Saturn Moon May Have Rigid Ice Shell

An analysis of gravity and topography data from the Saturnian moon Titan obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggests there could be something unexpected about the moon's outer ice shell. The findings, published on Aug. 28 in the journal Nature, suggest that Titan's ice shell could be rigid, and that relatively small topographic features on the surface could be associated with large ice "roots" extending into the underlying ocean.

The study was led by planetary scientists Douglas Hemingway and Francis Nimmo at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who used data from Cassini. The researchers were surprised to find a counterintuitive relationship between gravity and topography.

"Normally, if you fly over a mountain, you expect to see an increase in gravity due to the extra mass of the mountain," said Nimmo, a Cassini participating scientist. "On Titan, when you fly over a mountain, the gravity gets lower. That's a very odd observation."

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-261

[Rick]

Cassini Gets New Views of Titan's Land of Lakes

With the sun now shining down over the north pole of Saturn's moon Titan, a little luck with the weather, and trajectories that put the spacecraft into optimal viewing positions, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has obtained new pictures of the liquid methane and ethane seas and lakes that reside near Titan's north pole. The images reveal new clues about how the lakes formed and about Titan's Earth-like "hydrologic" cycle, which involves hydrocarbons rather than water.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-304

[Rick]

Cassini: Titan Flyby (T-98): Radar Looks for Changes

During this close flyby of Titan, the Cassini Radar will look for changes to the shoreline of Ontario Lacus when compared to the T-57/58 (June/July 2009) and T-65 (January 2010) fly-bys.  The instrument will be used as a synthetic aperture radar, a technique which uses that spacecraft's flight path to simulate a very large radar aperture.

On both approach and departure, the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) will map Titan's stratospheric temperatures to monitor seasonal change.  The Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) will ride along with CIRS to track clouds. On approach, the Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) will ride along to map the lakes and seas of the North Pole; on departure, VIMS will ride along to observe the evolution of the south polar vortex.

More: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/flybys/titan20140202/

[Rick]

Titan Flyby (T-100): the Closest Remaining Brush with Titan

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will whiz past Saturn's smoggy moon Titan on April 7, sniffing the moon's atmosphere as it makes the closest planned pass for the remainder of the mission. Cassini's point of closest approach during the flyby, named "T-100" by mission planners, is targeted at a mere 598 miles (963 kilometers) above the moon's haze-obscured surface.

The close flyby altitude enables Cassini's Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer, or INMS, to sample the composition of Titan's upper atmosphere as the spacecraft zooms past. The instrument is capable of determining the chemical, elemental and isotopic composition of the gaseous and volatile components of the neutral particles and the low energy ions in Titan's atmosphere and ionosphere. During this flyby INMS is the prime instrument at closest approach.

More: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/flybys/titan20140407/

[Rick]

Titan's Building Blocks Might Pre-date Saturn

A combined NASA and European Space Agency (ESA)-funded study has found firm evidence that nitrogen in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan originated in conditions similar to the cold birthplace of the most ancient comets from the Oort cloud. The finding rules out the possibility that Titan's building blocks formed within the warm disk of material thought to have surrounded the infant planet Saturn during its formation.

The main implication of this new research is that Titan's building blocks formed early in the solar system's history, in the cold disk of gas and dust that formed the sun. This was also the birthplace of many comets, which retain a primitive, or largely unchanged, composition today.

The research, led by Kathleen Mandt of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, was published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Co-authors on the study include colleagues from France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Observatoire de Paris.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-200

[Rick]

Icy Aquifers on Titan Transform Methane Rainfall

The NASA and European Space Agency Cassini mission has revealed hundreds of lakes and seas spread across the north polar region of Saturn's moon Titan. These lakes are filled not with water but with hydrocarbons, a form of organic compound that is also found naturally on Earth and includes methane. The vast majority of liquid in Titan's lakes is thought to be replenished by rainfall from clouds in the moon's atmosphere. But how liquids move and cycle through Titan's crust and atmosphere is still relatively unknown.

A recent study led by Olivier Mousis, a Cassini research associate at the University of Franche-Comté, France, examined how Titan's methane rainfall would interact with icy materials within underground reservoirs. They found that the formation of materials called clathrates changes the chemical composition of the rainfall runoff that charges these hydrocarbon "aquifers." This process leads to the formation of reservoirs of propane and ethane that may feed into some rivers and lakes.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-294

[Rick]

Cassini Watches Mysterious Feature Evolve in Titan Sea

NASA's Cassini spacecraft is monitoring the evolution of a mysterious feature in a large hydrocarbon sea on Saturn's moon Titan. The feature covers an area of about 100 square miles (260 square kilometers) in Ligeia Mare, one of the largest seas on Titan. It has now been observed twice by Cassini's radar experiment, but its appearance changed between the two apparitions.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-327

[Rick]

Swirling Cloud at Titan's Pole is Cold and Toxic

Scientists analyzing data from NASA's Cassini mission have discovered that a giant, toxic cloud is hovering over the south pole of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, after the atmosphere there cooled dramatically.

The scientists found that this giant polar vortex contains frozen particles of the toxic compound hydrogen cyanide, or HCN.

"The discovery suggests that the atmosphere of Titan's southern hemisphere is cooling much faster than we expected," said Remco de Kok of Leiden Observatory and SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, lead author of the study published today in the journal Nature.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-331

[Rick]

Cassini Finds Methane Ice Cloud in Titan's Stratosphere

NASA scientists have identified an unexpected high-altitude methane ice cloud on Saturn's moon Titan that is similar to exotic clouds found far above Earth's poles.

This lofty cloud, imaged by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, was part of the winter cap of condensation over Titan's north pole. Now, eight years after spotting this mysterious bit of atmospheric fluff, researchers have determined that it contains methane ice, which produces a much denser cloud than the ethane ice previously identified there.

"The idea that methane clouds could form this high on Titan is completely new," said Carrie Anderson, a Cassini participating scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study. "Nobody considered that possible before."

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4354

[Rick]

Cassini Sees Sunny Seas on Titan

As it soared past Saturn's large moon Titan recently, NASA's Cassini spacecraft caught a glimpse of bright sunlight reflecting off hydrocarbon seas.

In the past, Cassini had captured, separately, views of the polar seas and the sun glinting off them, but this is the first time both have been seen together in the same view.

The image is available at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA18432

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4359

[Mike]

I think these images are incredible and i'm amazed how close they look to sci-fi's ideas of how an alien world would look. Just makes you wonder what else is out there to be discovered.

[Rick]

Cassini Sails into New Ocean Adventures on Titan

NASA's Cassini mission continues its adventures in extraterrestrial oceanography with new findings about the hydrocarbon seas on Saturn's moon Titan. During a flyby in August, the spacecraft sounded the depths near the mouth of a flooded river valley and observed new, bright features in the seas that might be related to the mysterious feature that researchers dubbed the "magic island."

The findings are being presented this week at the Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting of the American Astronomical Society held in Tucson, Arizona.

To the delight of Cassini scientists, two new bright features appeared in Titan's largest sea, Kraken Mare, during the August 21 flyby. In contrast to a previously reported bright, mystery feature in another of Titan's large seas, Ligeia Mare, the new features in Kraken Mare were observed in both radar data and images from Cassini's Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS). Having observations at two different wavelengths provides researchers with important clues to the nature of these enigmatic objects.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4369

[Rick]

UT Research Offers Explanation for Titan Dune Puzzle

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is a peculiar place. Unlike any other moon, it has a dense atmosphere. It has rivers and lakes made up of components of natural gas, such as ethane and methane. It also has windswept dunes that are hundreds of yards high, more than a mile wide and hundreds of miles long—despite data suggesting the body to have only light breezes.

Research led by Devon Burr, an associate professor in UT's Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, shows that winds on Titan must blow faster than previously thought to move sand. The discovery may explain how the dunes were formed.

More: http://tntoday.utk.edu/2014/12/08/ut-research-offers-explanation-titan-dune-puzzle/

[Rick]

A New Way to View Titan: 'Despeckle' It

During 10 years of discovery, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has pulled back the smoggy veil that obscures the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Cassini's radar instrument has mapped almost half of the giant moon's surface; revealed vast, desert-like expanses of sand dunes; and plumbed the depths of expansive hydrocarbon seas. What could make that scientific bounty even more amazing? Well, what if the radar images could look even better?

Thanks to a recently developed technique for handling noise in Cassini's radar images, these views now have a whole new look. The technique, referred to by its developers as "despeckling," produces images of Titan's surface that are much clearer and easier to look at than the views to which scientists and the public have grown accustomed.

Typically, Cassini's radar images have a characteristic grainy appearance. This "speckle noise" can make it difficult for scientists to interpret small-scale features or identify changes in images of the same area taken at different times. Despeckling uses an algorithm to modify the noise, resulting in clearer views that can be easier for researchers to interpret.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4483

[Rick]

Dissolving Titan

Saturn's moon Titan is home to seas and lakes filled with liquid hydrocarbons, but what makes the depressions they lie in? A new study suggests that the moon's surface dissolves in a similar process that creates sinkholes on Earth.

Apart from Earth, Titan is the only body in the Solar System known to possess surface lakes and seas, as seen by the international Cassini mission. But at roughly –180°C, the surface of Titan is very cold and liquid methane and ethane, rather than water, dominate the 'hydrological' cycle.

Indeed, methane and ethane-filled topographic depressions are distinctive features near the moon's poles. Two forms have been identified by Cassini. There are vast seas several hundred kilometres across and up to several hundred metres deep, fed by river-like dendritic channels. Then there are numerous smaller, shallower lakes, with rounded edges and steep walls, and generally found in flat areas. Many empty depressions are also observed.

More: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Dissolving_Titan

[Rick]

NASA's Cassini Finds Monstrous Ice Cloud in Titan's South Polar Region

New observations made near the south pole of Titan by NASA's Cassini spacecraft add to the evidence that winter comes in like a lion on this moon of Saturn.

Scientists have detected a monstrous new cloud of frozen compounds in the moon's low- to mid-stratosphere – a stable atmospheric region above the troposphere, or active weather layer.

Cassini's camera had already imaged an impressive cloud hovering over Titan's south pole at an altitude of about 186 miles (300 kilometers). However, that cloud, first seen in 2012, turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. A much more massive ice cloud system has now been found lower in the stratosphere, peaking at an altitude of about 124 miles (200 kilometers).

More: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/monstrous-ice-cloud-in-titans-south-polar-region

[Rick]

Cassini Spies Titan's Tallest Peaks

In a nod to extraterrestrial mountaineers of the future, scientists working on NASA's Cassini mission have identified the highest point on Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

Titan's tallest peak is 10,948 feet (3,337 meters) high and is found within a trio of mountainous ridges called the Mithrim Montes. The researchers found that all of Titan's highest peaks are about 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) in elevation. The study used images and other data from Cassini's radar instrument, which can peer through the obscuring smog of Titan's atmosphere to reveal the surface in detail.

"It's not only the highest point we've found so far on Titan, but we think it's the highest point we're likely to find," said Stephen Wall, deputy lead of the Cassini radar team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6179

[Rick]

Working Toward 'Seamless' Infrared Maps of Titan

Producing a seamless global map of Titan is a challenging task, because observing conditions can vary greatly between each flyby. Among these variations are changes in the angle of the sun with respect to the surface and in the spacecraft's viewing direction. Such variations can make it even more difficult to remove the effects of scattering and absorption of light by Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere. These effects can also influence how bright different areas of the surface appear. Seasonal changes may also have played a role in changing the appearance of Titan's surface over the course of Cassini's long mission. These factors create a complex problem that researchers are still working to solve.

More from NASA

[Rick]

Cassini Finds Flooded Canyons on Titan

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found deep, steep-sided canyons on Saturn's moon Titan that are flooded with liquid hydrocarbons. The finding represents the first direct evidence of the presence of liquid-filled channels on Titan, as well as the first observation of canyons hundreds of meters deep.

A new paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters describes how scientists analyzed Cassini data from a close pass the spacecraft made over Titan in May 2013. During the flyby, Cassini's radar instrument focused on channels that branch out from the large, northern sea Ligeia Mare.

The Cassini observations reveal that the channels -- in particular, a network of them named Vid Flumina -- are narrow canyons, generally less than half a mile (a bit less than a kilometer) wide, with slopes steeper than 40 degrees. The canyons also are quite deep -- those measured are 790 to 1,870 feet (240 to 570 meters) from top to bottom.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6589

[Rick]

Cassini Sees Dramatic Seasonal Changes on Titan

s southern winter solstice approaches in the Saturn system, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been revealing dramatic seasonal changes in the atmospheric temperature and composition of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

Winter is taking a grip on Titan's southern hemisphere, and a strong, whirling atmospheric circulation pattern -- a vortex -- has developed in the upper atmosphere over the south pole. Cassini has observed that this vortex is enriched in trace gases -- gases that are otherwise quite rare in Titan's atmosphere. Cassini's observations show a reversal in the atmosphere above Titan's poles since the spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004, when similar features were seen in the northern hemisphere.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6655

[Rick]

Watching Summer Clouds on Titan

NASA's Cassini spacecraft watched clouds of methane moving across the far northern regions of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, on Oct. 29­­­­ and 30, 2016.

Several sets of clouds develop, move over the surface and fade during the course of this movie sequence, which spans 11 hours, with one frame taken every 20 minutes. Most prominent are long cloud streaks that lie between 49 and 55 degrees north latitude. While the general region of cloud activity is persistent over the course of the observation, individual streaks appear to develop then fade. These clouds are measured to move at a speed of about 14 to 22 miles per hour (7 to 10 meters per second).

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6670

[Rick]

Experiments Show Titan Lakes May Fizz with Nitrogen

A recent NASA-funded study has shown how the hydrocarbon lakes and seas of Saturn's moon Titan might occasionally erupt with dramatic patches of bubbles.

For the study, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, simulated the frigid surface conditions on Titan, finding that significant amounts of nitrogen can be dissolved in the extremely cold liquid methane that rains from the skies and collects in rivers, lakes and seas. They demonstrated that slight changes in temperature, air pressure or composition can cause the nitrogen to rapidly separate out of solution, like the fizz that results when opening a bottle of carbonated soda.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found that the composition of Titan's lakes and seas varies from place to place, with some reservoirs being richer in ethane than methane. "Our experiments showed that when methane-rich liquids mix with ethane-rich ones -- for example from a heavy rain, or when runoff from a methane river mixes into an ethane-rich lake -- the nitrogen is less able to stay in solution," said Michael Malaska of JPL, who led the study.

More: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6778