Alpha Centauri 2

Community => Recreation Commons => Destination: Alpha Centauri => Topic started by: Buster's Uncle on June 16, 2017, 03:10:38 pm

Title: Bright methane clouds on Titan
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 16, 2017, 03:10:38 pm

Bright methane clouds on Titan
Half a million kilometres from Saturn’s moon Titan, Cassini snaps methane clouds and hydrocarbon seas.
Cosmos  16 June 2017


(https://cosmos-magazine.imgix.net/file/spina/photo/10783/170616_Titan_Full.jpg?fit=clip&w=1366)
A view of Titan’s northern hemisphere.  Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute



NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sees bright methane clouds drifting in the summer skies of Saturn’s moon Titan, along with dark hydrocarbon lakes and seas clustered around the north pole.

Compared to earlier in Cassini’s mission, most of the surface in the moon’s northern high latitudes is now illuminated by the sun. Summer solstice in the Saturn system occurred on May 24, 2017.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 9, 2017, using a spectral filter that preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. Cassini obtained the view at a distance of about 507,000 kilometers from Titan.


https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/bright-methane-clouds-on-titan