Several clues indicate that Titan’s atmosphere has been depleted in methane during some period of its history, possibly as recently as 0.5-1 billion years ago. It could also happen in […]
Titan
Posted inTitan
Modeling Titan's Atmospheric Chemistry
NASA scientists have created a new recipe that captures key flavors of the brownish-orange atmosphere around Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The recipe is used for lab experiments designed to simulate […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Titan Solar Occultation Observations Reveal Transit Spectra of a Hazy World
High altitude clouds and hazes are integral to understanding exoplanet observations, and are proposed to explain observed featureless transit spectra. However, it is difficult to make inferences from these data […]
Posted inTitan
Equilibrium Composition Between liquid and Clathrate Reservoirs on Titan
Hundreds of lakes and a few seas of liquid hydrocarbons have been observed by the Cassini spacecraft to cover the polar regions of Titan. A significant fraction of these lakes […]
Posted inAstrochemistry, Titan
Titan's Atmosphere as Observed VIMS/Cassini Solar Occultations: CH4, CO and Evidence for C2H6 Absorption
We present an analysis of the VIMS solar occultations dataset, which extracts vertically resolved information on the characteristics of Titan’s atmosphere between 100-700 km with a characteristic vertical resolution of […]
Posted inIcy Worlds
New insights on Titan's interior from its obliquity
We constructed a 6-degrees of freedom rotational model of Titan as a 3-layer body consisting of a rigid core, a fluid global ocean, and a floating ice shell. The ice […]
Posted inIcy Worlds, Panspermia
Life Could Have Hitched a Ride to Outer Planet Moons
Life on Earth or Mars could have been brought to the moons of Jupiter or Saturn on rocks blasted off those planets, researchers say. These findings suggest if scientists ever […]
Posted inAstrochemistry, Titan
Detection of Propene in Titan's Stratosphere
The Voyager 1 flyby of Titan in 1980 gave a first glimpse of the chemical complexity of Titan’s atmosphere, detecting many new molecules with the infrared spectrometer (IRIS). These included […]
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life, Titan
Insights into Evolution of Life on Earth from Saturn's Moon Titan
Glimpses of the events that nurtured life on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago are coming from an unlikely venue almost 1 billion miles away, according to the leader […]
Posted inTitan
Antifreeze on Titan Could Affect Its Chances for Life
Antifreeze normally helps prevent freezing, but scientists find a common antifreeze compound that might exist on Saturn’s largest moon Titan can get trapped within ice-like cages. This discovery could influence […]