Titan, Saturn
Please post news, discussion and media of Titan! max 5 pics/post, 800 pixels high or wide, thanks |m| Great news here, this could spell severe investment in space, a real frenzy!!!! Wootageous :salute: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMCSUUHJCF_index_0.html
An artist's imagination of Saturn's largest moon Titan
Titan’s surface organics surpass oil reserves on Earth
13 February 2008
Saturn’s orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new Cassini data. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.
The new findings from the study led by Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, USA, are reported in the 29 January 2008 issue of the Geophysical Research Letters.
"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material—it’s a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Lorenz. “This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan.”
At a balmy minus 179º C , Titan is a far cry from Earth. Instead of water, liquid hydrocarbons in the form of methane and ethane are present on the moon's surface, and tholins probably make up its dunes. The term ‘tholins’ was coined by Carl Sagan in 1979 to describe the complex organic molecules at the heart of prebiotic chemistry.
Cassini has mapped about 20% of Titan's surface with radar. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed, with each of several dozen estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth's oil and gas reserves. The dark dunes that run along the equator contain a volume of organics several hundred times larger than Earth's coal reserves.
http://a1862.g.akamai.net/7/1862/14448/v1/esa.download.akamai.com/13452/qt/PIA09183.mov
Radar Shows Evidence of Seas on Titan
Proven reserves of natural gas on Earth total 130 thousand million tons, enough to provide 300 times the amount of energy the entire United States uses annually for residential heating, cooling and lighting. Dozens of Titan's lakes individually have the equivalent of at least this much energy in the form of methane and ethane.
"This global estimate is based mostly on views of the lakes in the northern polar regions. We have assumed the south might be similar, but we really don’t yet know how much liquid is there," said Lorenz. Cassini's radar has observed the south polar region only once, and only two small lakes were visible. Future observations of that area are planned during Cassini’s proposed extended mission.
Scientists estimated Titan's lake depth by making some general assumptions based on lakes on Earth. They took the average area and depth of lakes on Earth, taking into account the nearby surroundings, like mountains. On Earth, the lake depth is often 10 times less than the height of nearby terrain.
"We also know that some lakes are more than 10 m or so deep because they appear literally pitch-black to the radar. If they were shallow we'd see the bottom, and we don't," said Lorenz.
Seas on Titan
The question of how much liquid is on the surface is an important one because methane is a strong greenhouse gas on Titan as well as on Earth, but there is much more of it on Titan. If all the observed liquid on Titan is methane, it would only last a few million years, because as methane escapes into Titan's atmosphere, it breaks down and escapes into space. If the methane were to run out, Titan could become much colder. Scientists believe that methane might be supplied to the atmosphere by venting from the interior in cryovolcanic eruptions. If so, the amount of methane, and the temperature on Titan, may have fluctuated dramatically in Titan’s past.
“We are carbon-based life, and understanding how far along the chain of complexity towards life that chemistry can go in an environment like Titan will be important in understanding the origins of life throughout the universe,” added Lorenz.
Cassini's next radar flyby of Titan is on 22 February 2008, when the radar instrument will observe the landing site of ESA’s Huygens probe.
Notes for editors:
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI).
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. ESA developed the Huygens Titan probe, while ASI managed the development of the high-gain antenna and the other instruments of its participation. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
Please post news, discussion and media of Titan! max 5 pics/post, 800 pixels high or wide, thanks |m| Great news here, this could spell severe investment in space, a real frenzy!!!! Wootageous :salute: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMCSUUHJCF_index_0.html
An artist's imagination of Saturn's largest moon Titan
Titan’s surface organics surpass oil reserves on Earth
13 February 2008
Saturn’s orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new Cassini data. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.
The new findings from the study led by Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, USA, are reported in the 29 January 2008 issue of the Geophysical Research Letters.
"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material—it’s a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Lorenz. “This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan.”
At a balmy minus 179º C , Titan is a far cry from Earth. Instead of water, liquid hydrocarbons in the form of methane and ethane are present on the moon's surface, and tholins probably make up its dunes. The term ‘tholins’ was coined by Carl Sagan in 1979 to describe the complex organic molecules at the heart of prebiotic chemistry.
Cassini has mapped about 20% of Titan's surface with radar. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed, with each of several dozen estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth's oil and gas reserves. The dark dunes that run along the equator contain a volume of organics several hundred times larger than Earth's coal reserves.
http://a1862.g.akamai.net/7/1862/14448/v1/esa.download.akamai.com/13452/qt/PIA09183.mov
Radar Shows Evidence of Seas on Titan
Proven reserves of natural gas on Earth total 130 thousand million tons, enough to provide 300 times the amount of energy the entire United States uses annually for residential heating, cooling and lighting. Dozens of Titan's lakes individually have the equivalent of at least this much energy in the form of methane and ethane.
"This global estimate is based mostly on views of the lakes in the northern polar regions. We have assumed the south might be similar, but we really don’t yet know how much liquid is there," said Lorenz. Cassini's radar has observed the south polar region only once, and only two small lakes were visible. Future observations of that area are planned during Cassini’s proposed extended mission.
Scientists estimated Titan's lake depth by making some general assumptions based on lakes on Earth. They took the average area and depth of lakes on Earth, taking into account the nearby surroundings, like mountains. On Earth, the lake depth is often 10 times less than the height of nearby terrain.
"We also know that some lakes are more than 10 m or so deep because they appear literally pitch-black to the radar. If they were shallow we'd see the bottom, and we don't," said Lorenz.
Seas on Titan
The question of how much liquid is on the surface is an important one because methane is a strong greenhouse gas on Titan as well as on Earth, but there is much more of it on Titan. If all the observed liquid on Titan is methane, it would only last a few million years, because as methane escapes into Titan's atmosphere, it breaks down and escapes into space. If the methane were to run out, Titan could become much colder. Scientists believe that methane might be supplied to the atmosphere by venting from the interior in cryovolcanic eruptions. If so, the amount of methane, and the temperature on Titan, may have fluctuated dramatically in Titan’s past.
“We are carbon-based life, and understanding how far along the chain of complexity towards life that chemistry can go in an environment like Titan will be important in understanding the origins of life throughout the universe,” added Lorenz.
Cassini's next radar flyby of Titan is on 22 February 2008, when the radar instrument will observe the landing site of ESA’s Huygens probe.
Notes for editors:
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI).
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. ESA developed the Huygens Titan probe, while ASI managed the development of the high-gain antenna and the other instruments of its participation. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.
This radar image of Titan taken in July 2006 by Cassini shows dark shapes thought to be lakes containing liquid methane.
(NASA)
The bounty of fuels, however, is on an orange-coloured moon at least 1.2 billion kilometres from Earth, a trip that took the Cassini spacecraft seven years to make.
Researchers from the European Space Agency first reported their findings about the ringed planet's moon in the journal of Geophysical Research Letters on Jan. 28.
Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said the estimated fuel reserves are based on Cassini's surface maps of the moon, which show what appear to be lakes and seas. Researchers speculate the liquid is methane, one of the few known molecules to exist as a liquid in such extreme cold.
The scientists also believe dunes on the moon's surface are made of complex organic molecules called tholins.
"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material-it’s a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Lorenz in a statement. "This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan."
Although only 20 per cent of the moon's surface has been mapped, the researchers have already found dozens of lakes that individually could house as much energy as the 117,000 million tonnes of proven reserves of oil and gas on Earth.
"
This image depicts a cross-section of the Saturnian moon Titan. Cassini scientists speculate that there may be a layer of liquid water mixed with ammonia about 100 km below the surface of Titan.
The assumption that Titan contains an internal ocean was generated from data gleaned from Cassini's Synthetic Aperture Radar during 19 separate passes over Titan between October 2005 and May 2007.
Using data from the radar's early observations, the scientists and radar engineers established the locations of 50 unique landmarks on Titan's surface. They then searched for these same lakes, canyons and mountains in the reams of data returned by Cassini in its later flybys of Titan. What they found was prominent surface features seemed to shift from their expected positions by up to 31 km.
Since the features could not really have moved, the apparent shift told the scientists and engineers that Titan was spinning about its axis in a previously unsuspected manner. The pre-Cassini model of Titan's spin accounted for the gravitational fields of Saturn and other nearby planets and moons but omitted other smaller less well-understood effects. Since the observed spin of Titan does not fit this model, other influences, such as the seasonal changes in the motion of its atmosphere must also be important.
It is difficult to explain how such relatively low energy phenomena could have such a pronounced influence on Titan's spin unless the moon's icy crust was decoupled from its core by an internal ocean. If the crust were decoupled from the core, atmospheric fluctuation alone could account for the observed spin.
Credits: NASA/ JPL
:megaman:
July 30, 2008
Dwayne Brown
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726