Saturn a planet which is uniquely identifiable from the other set of planets in our solar system now seems to have been associated with another uniqueness.Titan,one of the saturn’s moons is now been found to contain atleast one of many liquid lake-like features!!!Cassini-Huygens,a joint NASA/ESA/ASI robotic space craft mission to study Saturn and its moons has finally come up with this breakthrough discovery.
Cassini was launched on October 15,1997 and entered into orbit around Saturn on July 1,2004.Huygens probe got seperated from the orbiter and reached Titan on January 14,2005 and has been relaying information about it. Cassini has made more than 40 close flybys of Titan.Now scientists claim the presence of “Ethane” in those lake like structures.As we may all know,liquid ethane is a component of crude oil.
"This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid," Bob Brown, team leader of Cassini's visual and mapping instrument,has said in a statement. An instrument aboard the Cassini orbiter, called the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, or VIMS, confirmed the presence of the lake called Ontario Lacus when the craft detected ethane.(shown in pic above;the blue colours are believed to be liquid hrdro carbons)
"Detection of liquid ethane in Ontario Lacus confirms a long-held idea that lakes and seas filled with methane and ethane exist on Titan," said Larry Soderblom, a study co-author from the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Like water dominates climate cycles on Earth, weather on Titan(where surface temperatures can be -300 degrees Fahrenheit which is about -200 degrees Celsius)revolves around thick, dark hydrocarbons. Methane and ethane fill the air with a dirty haze that rains down as ash, and rivers run with a gasoline-like liquid.
Previous observations of the lake with the Cassini radar imager, as far back as 2005, were unable to fully distinguish the lake's liquid hydrocarbons from the atmosphere's thick hydrocarbon haze. But Cassini's VIMS camera uses spectroscopy—a technique that identifies the chemical composition of objects by the way they reflect light.
This discovery implies that titan is the only other body in the solar system to contain a fluid besides our own planet earth.
Lets expect more and more amazing discoveries like this in the field of astronomy by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency that would make us exciting in the near future.We will keep you updated on such discoveries.Keep watching our blog for such interesting discoveries in the areas of science and astronomy.
*Article based on authentic sources such as NASAand NGC
Cassini was launched on October 15,1997 and entered into orbit around Saturn on July 1,2004.Huygens probe got seperated from the orbiter and reached Titan on January 14,2005 and has been relaying information about it. Cassini has made more than 40 close flybys of Titan.Now scientists claim the presence of “Ethane” in those lake like structures.As we may all know,liquid ethane is a component of crude oil.
"This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid," Bob Brown, team leader of Cassini's visual and mapping instrument,has said in a statement. An instrument aboard the Cassini orbiter, called the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, or VIMS, confirmed the presence of the lake called Ontario Lacus when the craft detected ethane.(shown in pic above;the blue colours are believed to be liquid hrdro carbons)
"Detection of liquid ethane in Ontario Lacus confirms a long-held idea that lakes and seas filled with methane and ethane exist on Titan," said Larry Soderblom, a study co-author from the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Like water dominates climate cycles on Earth, weather on Titan(where surface temperatures can be -300 degrees Fahrenheit which is about -200 degrees Celsius)revolves around thick, dark hydrocarbons. Methane and ethane fill the air with a dirty haze that rains down as ash, and rivers run with a gasoline-like liquid.
Previous observations of the lake with the Cassini radar imager, as far back as 2005, were unable to fully distinguish the lake's liquid hydrocarbons from the atmosphere's thick hydrocarbon haze. But Cassini's VIMS camera uses spectroscopy—a technique that identifies the chemical composition of objects by the way they reflect light.
This discovery implies that titan is the only other body in the solar system to contain a fluid besides our own planet earth.
Lets expect more and more amazing discoveries like this in the field of astronomy by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency that would make us exciting in the near future.We will keep you updated on such discoveries.Keep watching our blog for such interesting discoveries in the areas of science and astronomy.
*Article based on authentic sources such as NASAand NGC
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