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Title: Discovery of fog at the south pole of Titan
Authors: M.E. Brown, A.L. Smith, C. Chen, M. Adamkovics

While Saturn's moon Titan appears to support an active methane hydrological cycle, no direct evidence for surface-atmosphere exchange has yet appeared. It is possible that the identified lake-features could be filled with ethane, an involatile long term residue of atmospheric photolysis; the apparent stream and channel features could be ancient from a previous climate; and the tropospheric methane clouds, while frequent, could cause no rain to reach the surface. We report here the detection of fog at the south pole of Titan during late summer using observations from the VIMS instrument on board the Cassini spacecraft. While terrestrial fog can form from a variety of causes, most of these processes are inoperable on Titan. Fog on Titan can only be caused by evaporation of liquid methane; the detection of fog provides the first direct link between surface and atmospheric methane. Based on the detections presented here, liquid methane appears widespread at the south pole of Titan in late southern summer, and the hydrolgical cycle on Titan is current active.

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Louisiana State University professor finds alternate explanation for dune formation on Saturn's largest moon
A new and likely controversial paper has just been published online in Nature Geoscience by LSU Department of Geography and Anthropology Chair Patrick Hesp and United States Geological Survey scientist David Rubin. The paper, "Multiple origins of linear dunes on Earth and Titan," examines a possible new mechanism for the development of very large linear dunes formed on the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

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Titan 'put on quite a show'
A paper written by a University of Hawai'i researcher that describes the first storm observed in the tropical latitudes of Saturn's moon Titan will be published today in the journal Nature.
The paper's lead author, Dr. Emily Schaller, wrote it while working as a Hubble Fellow at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's Institute for Astronomy.

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Caltech Scientists Discover Storms in the Tropics of Titan
For all its similarities to Earth - clouds that pour rain (albeit liquid methane not liquid water) onto the surface producing lakes and rivers, vast dune fields in desert-like regions, plus a smoggy orange atmosphere that looks like Los Angeles's during fire season - Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is generally "a very bland place, weatherwise," says Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

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STORM BREWS OVER TITAN'S TROPICAL DESERT
While far from a tropical rain forest, the equatorial region of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has recently displayed tantalizing evidence that the parched, dry, ultra-frigid desert can support large-scale storms.
The research, to be published in the August 13, 2009 issue of the journal Nature, announces the discovery of significant cloud formation (about three million square kilometres) within the moon's tropical zone near its equator. Prior to this event (in April 2008) it was not known whether significant cloud formation was possible in Titan's tropical regions. This activity in Titan's tropics and mid-latitudes also seems to have triggered subsequent cloud development at the moon's south pole where it was considered improbable due to the Sun's seasonal angle relative to Titan.

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Storm Clouds Over Titan

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Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA/Henry Roe, Lowell Observatory/Emily Schaller, Insitute for Astronomy, University of Hawai'i

Gemini North adaptive optics image of Titan showing storm feature (bright area). Titan is about 0.8 arcsecond across in this 2.12 micron near-infrared image obtained on April 14, 2008 (UTC). Note to photo editors: This image is provided at full pixel resolution and is not available at higher resolution due to the nature of this data.

Taking advantage of advanced techniques to correct distortions caused by Earth's atmosphere, astronomers used the NSF-supported Gemini Observatory to capture the first images of clouds over the tropics of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

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Atmospheric 'pulse' may spread rain clouds across Titan
A pulse in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan can spawn methane clouds across the moon, new observations suggest. Although the cause of such atmospheric events is still unknown, it could explain some puzzling features seen by the only probe ever to land on Titan's surface.

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Clouds Discovered over Titan's Tropics
In a case of persistent interplanetary detective work using powerful ground-based telescopes, a team of astronomers located and tracked the first bright but transient clouds over tropical latitudes on Saturn's moon Titan. The astronomers used the Gemini North telescope and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) in an almost-nightly observing program providing new insights into the nature of Titan's tropospheric (low-elevation) clouds. The team's paper, Storms in the tropics of Titan, will be published in the August 13, 2009 edition of the journal Nature. The astronomers observed a convective pulse at mid-latitudes that generated a wave in Titan's atmosphere. This wave went on to trigger cloud formation over both the equatorial and south polar regions. These new observations of this type of equatorial cloud may help explain the formation of liquid methane-carved channels and rivers located in the vicinity of the Huygens probe landing site.

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January 29, 2009

Saturn's Moon Titan Mimics Earth's Tropics
No, it's not science fiction: If space travellers ever visit Saturn's largest moon, they will find a tropical world where temperatures plunge to minus 274 degrees Fahrenheit, methane rains from the sky and dunes of ice or tar cover the planet's most arid regions -a cold mirror image of Earth's tropical climate, according to scientists at the University of Chicago.

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Surface features on Titan form like Earths, but with a frigid twist

Saturn's haze-enshrouded moon Titan turns out to have much in common with Earth in the way that weather and geology shape its terrain, according to two pieces of research to be presented at the XXVII General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Wind, rain, volcanoes, tectonics and other Earth-like processes all sculpt features on Titan's complex and varied surface in an environment more than 100 °C colder on average than Antarctica.

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"It is really surprising how closely Titan's surface resembles Earth's," says Rosaly Lopes, a planetary geologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, who is presenting the results on Friday, 7 August. "In fact, Titan looks more like the Earth than any other body in the Solar System, despite the huge differences in temperature and other environmental conditions."

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Title: Saturn's Titan: A strict test for life's cosmic ubiquity
Authors: J.I. Lunine

Is life a common outcome of physical and chemical processes in the universe? Within our own solar system, a successful search for even primitive life, were it to have an origin independent from life on Earth, would dramatically advance a positive answer. The most stringent test for a second independent origin of life on Earth would come from examination of either the most physically remote from Earth, or the most exotic type, of planetary environments in which one might plausibly imagine a form of life could exist. In this paper I argue that Saturn's moon Titan is the best such target in our solar system. Further, Titan might be a type example of a planetary environment abundant throughout the cosmos.

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