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TOPIC: Titan
Blobrana


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RE: Titan
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This image of Titan was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on September 08, 2006, when it was approximately 185,745 kilometres away.

N00065391
Expand (35kb, 509 x 509)

The image was taken using the CL1 and CB3 filters.

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Blobrana


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This image of Titan was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on September 08, 2006, when it was approximately 193,522 kilometres away.

N00065400
Expand (30kb, 510 x 507)

The image was taken using the CL1 and CB3



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Blobrana


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This image of Titan was taken by the Cassini spacecraft on September 05, 2006, when it was approximately 1,229,201 kilometres away.

T17FLYBY
Expand (23kb, 1024 x 1024)
Credit NASA/JPL

The image was taken using the P120 and UV3 filters.

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Blobrana


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T 1 7
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T I T A N 0 2 8 T I ( T 1 7 )
MISSION DESCRIPTION

Nearly 47 days after Titan-16, Cassini returns to Titan for its eighteenth targeted encounter.
The closest approach to Titan occurs on Saturday, September 7, at 20:16 spacecraft time (September 7 at 2:16 p.m. Pacific Time) at an altitude of 1000 kilometres above the surface and at a speed of 6.0 kilometres per second. The latitude at closest approach is 23° N (near equator), and the encounter occurs on orbit number 28.
This encounter is set up with two manoeuvres: an apoapsis manoeuvre on August 1, and an approach manoeuvre, scheduled for September 4. This inbound encounter occurs about 2 days before Saturn closest approach.

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Blobrana


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RE: Titan
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This Cassini flyby image shows Titan's dark mid-latitudes, and the southern terrain.

This was the first in a series of "illuminated outbound flybys" of where the illuminated hemisphere was visible following the closest approach. Cassini's flyby of Titan on July 22, 2006 sent the spacecraft into a more inclined orbit about Saturn.

PIA08246b
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The image was taken in polarised infrared light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 22, 2006 at a distance of approximately 148,000 kilometres from Titan. Image scale is 9 kilometres per pixel.

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Blobrana


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This mage of Titan was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on August 10, 2006, when it was approximately 3,093,156 kilometres away.

Titan Aug10 2006
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The image was taken using the CL1 and CB2 filters.

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Blobrana


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Huygens Probe Data
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Huygens Central Acceleration Sensor Unit (CASU)

CASU

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Blobrana


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ESA’s Huygens probe successfully descended through the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and safely landed on its surface on 14 January 2005. An extraordinary new world has been unveiled. The unique data obtained by the six Huygens experiments are now being archived in the ESA Planetary Science Archive (PSA). A copy of the archived data set is also available in the NASA Planetary Data System (PDS).
Access to the Huygens archive is open from today to the wide scientific community.

"The release of the Huygens scientific data archive represents a major milestone in the Huygens mission" - Jean-Pierre Lebreton, Huygens Project Scientist.

The data sets include not only the data, but also calibration information and documentation necessary to understand and process the products, and to carry out scientific analyses. The full archive containing all data available to the scientists is also open to the public for download.

"This achievement is the result of a major effort performed during the last three years by all the Huygens teams, scientists and engineers, from Europe and the United States" - Olivier Witasse, ESA planetary scientist.

It is possible to retrieve data from the following instruments: ACP (Aerosol Collector and Pyrolyser), GCMS (Gas Chromatograph and Mass Spectrometer), DWE (Doppler Wind Experiment) and HASI (Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument). Engineering data are also available.
Data from the DISR (Descent Imager Spectral Radiometer) and SSP (Surface Science Package) experiments, together with the official Huygens entry and descent trajectory are expected to be released in the September-October timeframe.

"We look forward to any feedback related to these high-quality data" - Lyle Huber, NASA PDS Atmospheres Node.

Source

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Blobrana


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The Cassini spacecraft acquired this image showing terrain on the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere.

Prominent dark areas found in the moon's equatorial region appear to contain vast and continuous dune fields, discovered by the Cassini Radar experiment and likely composed of particles that drop from Titan's unique, smoggy atmosphere. The dark regions seen here are provisionally named Aaru and Senkyo (at right), with parts of western Fensal and Aztlan showing at left, near the terminator.

PIA08231
Credit NASA/JPL

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centred at 752 nanometers. The view was obtained on July 2, 2006 at a distance of approximately 163,000 kilometres from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 62 degrees. Image scale is 19 kilometres per pixel.

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Methane Drizzle
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Liquid methane drizzles on the surface of Titan, a moon of Saturn, according to a paper by NASA and university scientists that appears in today's issue of the journal, Nature.

Data from the European Space Agency's Huygens probe indicates there is a lower, barely visible, liquid methane-nitrogen cloud that drops rain to the surface of Titan, reported a team of scientists from universities, an observatory and NASA. The probe collected the data on January 14, 2005, when it approached and landed on Titan.

"The rain on Titan is just a slight drizzle, but it rains all the time, day in, day out. It makes the ground wet and muddy with liquid methane. This is why the Huygens probe landed with a splat. It landed in methane mud" - Christopher McKay, a scientist at NASA Ames Research Centre in California's Silicon Valley and second author of the study.

The principal author is Tetsuya Tokano from the University of Cologne, Germany.
On Titan, the clouds and rain are formed of liquid methane. On Earth, methane is a flammable gas, but Titan has no oxygen in its atmosphere that could support combustion. Also, the temperatures on Titan are so cold -- minus 149 degrees Celsius -- that the methane can form liquid. Titan's landscape includes fluvial, river-like features that may well be formed by methane rain, scientists noted.
A gap separates the liquid methane cloud -- the source of the rain -- from a higher, upper methane ice cloud, according to the scientific study. Scientists say the downward flow of methane due to the rain is balanced by upward transport of methane gas by large-scale atmospheric circulation.
According to scientists, the rain comes from thin clouds of methane. The upper clouds are methane ice, and the lower clouds are liquid and composed of a combination of methane and nitrogen. Computer models indicate these thin liquid methane clouds cover about half of Titan, even though methane abundance on the moon decreases with latitude, the team reported.

"We determined that the rain on Titan is equal to about 5 centimetres a year. This is about as much rain as Death Valley (receives). The difference is (that) on Titan, this rain is spread out evenly over the entire year." - Christopher McKay.

The scientists reported that erosion potential from the very light methane drizzle may be quite limited, but at least would be sufficient to wet the surface material, and may explain its generally wet character.

In addition to McKay the other co-authors of the scientific paper include Fritz Neubauer, of the University of Cologne; Sushil Atreya, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Francesca Ferri, University of Padova, Italy; Marcello Fulchignoni, of both the Paris Observatory and the University of Denis Diderot, Paris; and Hasso Niemann, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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