A sly, wet world of the moon: so close, but so far away

For centuries, Titan - Saturn's biggest moon - was trapped in a thick secret orange mist, whose mysterious face was hidden beneath an alien veil of shaded hydrocarbons. A resident of the outer solar system - away from our sun - this cold moon world was eventually forced to show its hidden faces to astronomers' snoopers from

Huygens probefrom

- That was carried by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] through interplanetary space. from

Cassini from

 spaceship. from

Cassini from

 The very successful task of exploring the Saturn system is now over, but astronomers are still dumping treasures of important data. from

Cassini / Huygens from

 Return to Earth. December 2017, use is now complete from

Cassini from

 In the data set, astronomers published two papers describing the characteristics of the new discovery of Titan. These newspapers show a new topographic map of Saturn's sly, damp, mysterious orange enveloped in the moon world, this map opens a fascinating new window for many of the mysteries of the Titan's surface - its strange hydrocarbon liquid flow, and its hydrocarbons Compound - scratches the terrain, as well as the exotic oceans of liquid ethane and methane. Although the Titan is nearly one billion miles from Earth, both topographical studies are based on data from it. from

Cassini from

 The spaceship reveals a new way, this distant moon and our own planet are weird and unforgettable similar.

Just as the ocean surface on our own planet is at the average elevation we usually call "sea level," Titan's liquid ocean is also at an average altitude. This is a recent discovery that shows interesting similarities between our planet and this distant lunar world. Titan is the only world known by astronomers in our own solar system to have a stable pool of liquid on its surface. However, the difference is that the lakes and oceans of the Titans are filled with hydrocarbons, not liquid water filled with familiar lakes, rivers, oceans and oceans.

Use from

Cassini from

 The dataset, an astronomer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was able to create a new topographic map of Titan. According to Paul Corlies, a Ph.D. student, it takes about a year to create a map. He is the first author of a paper describing the study. The title of this research report is as follows: from

The terrain and form of the Titan at the end of the Cassini mission.

The new map combines all Titan terrain data collected from many different sources. Because only about 9% of Titan is observed for relatively high resolution - 25% to 30% of the terrain is imaged at low resolution - the remaining Titan is mapped by the Cornell team using interpolation algorithms. And the global minimization process. This method reduces errors such as due to location from

Cassini from

spaceship.

The second paper was published under the heading: from

Topographic constraints on the evolution and connectivity of the Timtutrine Basin in Titanfrom

It was discovered that the three known sea areas of Titan share a common equipotential surface. This means that they form sea level, just like the sea level on our own planet. This is either because there is a flow through the ground between the three liquid-filled hydrocarbon oceans, or because the passage between them allows sufficient liquid ethane and methane to flow through. The oceans on the Titans are all at the same height.

The two papers describing the map and the resulting findings were published on December 2, 2017. from

Geographic Review Express. from

 New research based on data obtained from

Cassini from

Radar instrument, a few months before the spacecraft deliberately hit Saturn's whirlwind atmosphere in 2017 - it burned there from

season finale from

 A very successful mission.

The from

Cassini - Huygens' mission from

 Is a cooperation from

NASA/European Space Agency/Italian Space Agency from

 The robotic spacecraft consists of two parts: one is from

European Space Agency [ESA] Huygens Detector, from

 This was named after the Dutch mathematician and astronomer Christian Huygens [1629-1695] who discovered the Titan. Huygens also studied Saturn's beautiful hairspring system. The second part is designed by NASA. from

Cassini orbiterfrom

Named after the Italian-French astronomer Giovanni Dominic Cassini [1625-1712], he discovered the countless other Saturn quartets - mostly cold satellites. After the danger of interplanetary space, after a long journey from

CAssini - Huygens from

 The spacecraft finally reached Saturn on July 1, 2004. Spacecraft on December 25, 2004 from

Huygens probe from

 Deliberately separated from from

Cassini orbiterfrom

. from

Huygens from

 Then it began its historic decline through the thick Titan orange clouds, eventually reaching the secret surface of this mysterious lunar world. Titan's hidden face finally unveiled.

Raise the veil of the Titan

Titan is slightly larger than Mercury - this is the smallest major planet of our Sun family - if it rotates around our star instead of Saturn, it will definitely be classified as a planet. The from

Huygens probe from

 The image shows a smooth, young surface that is scarred by relatively few impact craters. The from

probe from

 It also found that this cold lunar climate includes a lot of hydrocarbon rain and strong strong winds. Planetary scientists immediately realized that some of the surface features of the Titans are very similar to the surface features on Earth. Indeed, the first images of scientists' research came from from

Huygens from

 Staring at sand dunes, oceans, rivers, lakes and deltas - these are similar to the peculiarities on our planet. Many planetary scientists now suggest that Titans may be similar to the Earth's way of life, long before life emerged and evolved from non-biological matter.

The Titan runs around its beautiful natural gas giant planet every 15 days and 22 hours. Like the big moon of our planet itself, and the other satellites that surround the four major gas planets in the outer limits of our solar system, the Titan's rotation period is exactly the same as its orbital period. This means that the moon rotates synchronously with its ring-shaped parent planet. As a result, the Titan only showed a face to Saturn.

The Titan has three seas. However, these oceans are not filled with water but contain liquid hydrocarbons. These three seas are located near the Titan Arctic, and they are surrounded by a large number of small oil and gas lakes in the northern hemisphere. In stark contrast, there is only one lonely lake in the southern hemisphere.

It was not until 2014 that the exact composition of these hydrocarbon lakes and oceans was known. from

Cassini from

 Radar instrument disclosure from

Ligeia Marefrom

- Titan's second sea - filled with methane. from

Ligeia Mare from

 The same size as the two Great Lakes on Earth - Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Undersea from

Ligeia Mare from

 It is believed to be coated with a layer of sludge consisting of organic-rich compounds.

Nitrogen and methane, which rotate together in the atmosphere of Titan, interact to produce a variety of organic compounds. Many planetary scientists have suggested that the heaviest material will sink into the surface of this tormented lunar world. When these compounds enter the hydrocarbon waters - whether they are dumped directly from the air, like heavy hydrocarbons, large amounts of lazy hydrocarbon raindrops, or traveling with the Titan River - some dissolved in liquid methane. Insoluble compounds, such as nitrite and benzene, float on the floor of these exotic waters.

In the case of Titan, our own planet and Titan have a nitrogen-based atmosphere - over 95% nitrogen. However, unlike our own planetary atmosphere, the Titan's atmosphere contains very little oxygen. In fact, the rest of the Titan's atmosphere is mainly composed of methane and a small amount of other gases, such as ethane. At the cold temperatures of Saturn's golden light and the warmth of the sun, Titan's methane and ethane can be collected as liquids on the surface.

For this reason, astronomers have long believed that hydrocarbon lakes and oceans may exist on the surface of this mysterious, veiled lunar world. Data obtained from it from

Cassini / Huygens from

 Verified their expectations. Since it reached the Saturn system, from

Cassini spacecraft from

 Try to uncover more than 620,000 square miles of Titan's hidden surface. During the mission, from

Cassini from

 It shows that almost 2% of Titan's entire surface is covered with liquid.

The terrain and form of the Titan at the end of the Cassini mission

The Titan's new map reveals several features that Titan has never seen before. Recently discovered features include mountains up to 700 meters. The map also provides a global view of the high and low points of the Titan terrain, which helps astronomers confirm that the two locations in the Equatorial Equatorial region are actually depressions, possibly dry ancient seas, or from

Ice volcano [cryovolcanoes].

The map also shows that Titan is flatter [flatter] than previously thought. This suggests that the Titan crust thickness changes more than originally proposed by planetary scientists.

"The focus of this work is to create a map for the scientific community," Paul Corlies commented on January 3, 2018. from

Cornell University Press Release. from

 Within 30 minutes of the data being available online, Corlies began receiving inquiries about how to use it. Data sets can be downloaded in the form of observed data, as well as unobserved interpolated data. The map is valuable for scientists who simulate the Titan climate, studying the shape and gravity of the Titans, testing internal models, and those seeking to understand morphological topography...

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