Mysterious Titan has a ghostly light

Mysterious Titan has a ghostly light

Astronomers have discovered a ghostly glow around the north and south poles of the satellite of Saturn Titan, which until that moment had not been discovered. The cause of gas emissions from two points that are shifted along the line (east-west) along the poles, lead researchers to a dead end.

"This is an unexpected and revolutionary discovery," says astrochemist Martin Kordiner from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "This kind of variation from east to west has never been seen in the atmosphere of Titan."

Mysterious Titan has a ghostly light

With highly sensitive observations made with the Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array (Atakam Big Millimeter / Submillimeter Grid) in Chile, the Kordiner team was able to take a 3-minute snapshot of the chemical signature of hydrogen isocyanide (HNC) and cyanoacetylene (HC3N) - two compounds which are known to be concentrated in the lower polar atmosphere of Titan. The NASA Cassini spacecraft, which is currently in orbit on Saturn, confirms this by detecting cloud caps above the north and south poles in which HNC and HC3N are concentrated.

Mysterious Titan has a ghostly light

The atmosphere of Titan in a false color

But it is strange that the gas clouds are displaced from the pole at high altitudes. This is contrary to our understanding of how the atmosphere of Titan should work. In the middle atmosphere of Titan, powerful winds blowing from east to west create zones of mixed gases, reminding us of familiar phenomena on Jupiter, only on a smaller scale. These high-altitude clouds practically do not mix. Scientists cannot yet explain this effect.

"It seems incredible that there are chemical mechanisms capable of causing an air pocket effect in observed molecules in a fairly short time," said planetary scientist Conor Nixon. "We expected the molecules to mix fairly quickly, under the influence of Titan's strong winds."

Comments (0)
Search