Titan tagged posts

The frigid lakeshores of Saturn’s moon Titan might be encrusted with strange, unearthly minerals, according to new research being presented here. Scientists re-creating Titan-esque conditions in their laboratory have discovered new compounds and minerals not found on Earth, including a co-crystal made of solid acetylene and butane.

Acetylene and butane exist on Earth as gases and are commonly used for welding and camp stove fuel. On Titan, with its extremely cold temperatures, acetylene and butane are solid and combine to form crystals, the new research found.

The new mineral might be responsible for the bathtub rings that are suspected to exist around Titan’s hyd...

Titan’s winter polar vortex imaged by the Cassini Spacecraft’s ISS camera. The vortex is now in deep winter and can only be seen because the polar clouds within the vortex extend high above Titan’s surface into the sunlight. The vortex was extremely cold from 2012-2015 giving rise to unusual nitrile ice clouds. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Jason Major

A new study led by a University of Bristol earth scientist has shown that recently reported unexpected behaviour on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is due to its unique atmospheric chemistry. Titan’s polar atmosphere recently experiences and unexpected and significant cooling, contrary to all model predictions and differing from the behaviour of all other terrestrial planets in our solar system.

Titan is the largest moo...

This view of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is among the last images the Cassini spacecraft sent to Earth before it plunged into the giant planet’s atmosphere. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Researchers with NASA’s Cassini mission found evidence of a toxic hybrid ice in a wispy cloud high above the south pole of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The finding is a new demonstration of the complex chemistry occurring in Titan’s atmosphere – in this case, cloud formation in the giant moon’s stratosphere – and part of a collection of processes that ultimately helps deliver a smorgasbord of organic molecules to Titan’s surface.

Invisible to the human eye, the cloud was detected at infrared wavelengths by the Composite Infrared Spectrometer, or CIRS, on the Cassini spacecraft...

The Dragonfly dual-quadcopter could make multiple flights to explore diverse locations as it characterizes the habitability of Titan’s environment.
Credit: APL/Mike Carroll

Dragonfly, a New Frontiers-class mission concept that the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory has proposed to NASA, would use an instrumented, radioisotope-powered, dual-quadcopter to explore potential habitable sites where life could be developed on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The moon is one of a number of “ocean worlds” in our solar system that hold the ingredients for life, and is known to be covered with rich organic material that is undergoing chemical processes that might be similar to those on early Earth, before life developed.

Titan has diverse, carbon-rich chemistry on a surface dominated by water ice...