Scientists Track Methane Clouds Wafting Over Titan’s Lakes for the First Time

Scientists Track Methane Clouds Wafting Over Titan’s Lakes for the First Time

It's the first evidence of cloud convection in the northern hemisphere of Saturn’s enigmatic moon.

The Atmosphere of Titan in Late Northern Summer from JWST and Keck Observations - Astrobiology

Saturn’s moon Titan undergoes a long annual cycle of 29.45 Earth years. Titan’s northern winter and spring were investigated in detail by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft (2004-2017), but the northern summer season remains sparsely studied. Here we present new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Keck II telescope made in 2022 and 2023 […] The post The Atmosphere of Titan in Late Northern Summer from JWST and Keck Observatio…

NASA finalises design of Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s Moon Titan

New Delhi: NASA’s Dragonfly mission to the Saturnian Moon of Titan has passed its critical design review, indicating that the design is mature and the spacecraft can now be fabricated and integrated before testing to ensure it works as intended in the remote ice moon. The spacecraft is designed to be launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida in 2028. Dragonfly will take six and a half years to reach Titan,…

Researchers have recorded for the first time the active circulation of methane clouds on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, which sheds light on its climate processes. The results were obtained thanks to data from the James Webb Space Telescope and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The observations made it possible to study the dynamic behavior of clouds in the northern hemisphere, where methane lakes and seas are located. Using infrared filters from b…