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eppur_se_muova

(36,227 posts)
Tue Mar 29, 2016, 06:05 PM Mar 2016

Fog on Titan detected by Huygens lander (phys.org)

March 29, 2016 by Tomasz Nowakowski

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, with its thick, dense atmosphere, is of special interest for scientists studying atmospheric features on other worlds. While the presence of fog on Titan was revealed in 2009 thanks to data provided by NASA/ESA Cassini spacecraft, a new study shows that this phenomenon is also visible from ground observations conducted by the ESA Huygens lander. A paper describing the new findings appeared online on Mar. 14 in the arXiv repository.

Huygens was released by the Cassini spacecraft and landed on Titan on January 14, 2005. It gathered crucial scientific data while descending through the nitrogen-dominated atmosphere for 2.5 hours and transmitted a signal for about 70 minutes after touchdown before contact was lost. It provided a variety of in situ measurements that are to this day bringing new insights on this curious planet-like moon.

One of the new findings was derived from the data collected by Huygens' Side Looking Imager (SLI). A team of researchers from York University in Toronto, Canada, led by Christina Smith, has found that methane fog is also visible from the surface of Titan.

"The process of detecting this fog was, we took the Huygens Side Looking Imager data from data archives, restricting the images to those taken after landing," Smith told Phys.org.

To detect the feature, a total of 82 SLI images were calibrated, processed and examined. The team calibrated this subset of images and processed them using a variety of techniques. The technique that revealed these features most clearly was with mean frame subtraction. According to the scientists, the calibrated images show a smooth vertical radiance gradient across the images, with no other discernible features.
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more: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-fog-titan-huygens-lander.html#jCp

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