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Science

Titan's Icy Surface Revealed 14

Posted by michael from the tire-chains-mandatory dept.
Sven-Erik writes "BBC News writes about an article in the journal Science: Scientists have peered through the smoggy orange haze of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and seen icy bedrock exposed on the surface. The observations reveal a surface that is not entirely covered by liquid and solid organic materials that rain out of the atmosphere, as was thought."
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Titan's Icy Surface Revealed More

Titan's Icy Surface Revealed

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  • Where is the photographic evidence to back up their statements?

    • Probably in a paper (Score:4, Informative)

      by Spamalamadingdong ( 323207 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @03:07PM (#5811144) Homepage Journal
      From the article, the data analyzed were the spectra in certain IR bands which can penetrate the hydrocarbon smog. This isn't the kind of thing which generates neat pictures; however, a map of Titan which shows the ice "land" and the hydrocarbon "sea" would be. That might not have made it into the article because it's still being generated, or saved for publication in something more prestigious than a news release.

      • Re:Probably in a paper (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        There have been no visible wavelength photographs taken of Titan's surface -- the atmosphere is too thick. The findings in this paper are all from the IR spectra.

        As for getting photographs, that's what the Hygens probe on board Cassini is supposed to do when it drops into Titan's atmosphere sometime after Cassini arrives at Saturn in 2004.
      • Hubble has 2 instruments capable of spectrometry and imaging in infrared or near-infrared wavelengths: the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. It wasn't totally unrealistic to expect images along with spectra.

  • hmmm (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    With all those hydrocarbons Titan could be next for a liberation

  • Is this news? (Score:4, Informative)

    by CheshireCatCO ( 185193 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @12:59PM (#5809934) Homepage
    I can't find the Science paper referenced (it doesn't seem to have hit the website yet), but from what I'm reading at the BBC site, this isn't news. We've had IR observations of Titan for at over a decade now. (Heck, Griffiths was the author of the papers.) That the surface of Titan wasn't purely methane/ethane oceans was an immediate conclusion from those data. (They also determined that there was a significant amount of water ice on the surface. Which might be what they BBC article means by "like Ganymede".)

    I'll have to wait to see the paper to see what's new about their results, but I haven't heard anything yet that I haven't heard before.

  • More about Titan... (Score:5, Informative)

    by breon.halling ( 235909 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @01:22PM (#5810169)

    More info is here. [nineplanets.org]

    And while you're at it, you may want to check out Celestia [shatters.net], a 3D space simulator.

  • Too hot, too little UV, said TISA (Score:4, Funny)

    by Muhammar ( 659468 ) on Friday April 25, 2003 @07:46PM (#5813015)
    TISA experts conceded that while Earth has fairly dense atmosphere, its very high surface temperature and presence of oxygen makes the existence of liquid methane on Earth unlikely.

    [Increase your sprout and root potency! 6 day free trial! Guaranteed success or your ferricyanide back!]

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