Discovery of fog at the south pole of Titan
While Saturn's moon Titan appears to support an active methane hydrological cycle, no direct evidence for surface-atmosphere exchange has yet appeared. It is possible that the identified lake-features could be filled with ethane, an involatile long term residue of atmospheric photolysis; the ap...
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ftdatacite:10.48550/arxiv.0908.4087 2023-05-15T18:21:52+02:00 Discovery of fog at the south pole of Titan Brown, M. E. Smith, A. L. Chen, C. Adamkovics, M. 2009 https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.0908.4087 https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.4087 unknown arXiv https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637x/706/1/l110 arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP FOS Physical sciences article-journal Article ScholarlyArticle Text 2009 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.0908.4087 https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637x/706/1/l110 2022-04-01T15:07:32Z While Saturn's moon Titan appears to support an active methane hydrological cycle, no direct evidence for surface-atmosphere exchange has yet appeared. It is possible that the identified lake-features could be filled with ethane, an involatile long term residue of atmospheric photolysis; the apparent stream and channel features could be ancient from a previous climate; and the tropospheric methane clouds, while frequent, could cause no rain to reach the surface. We report here the detection of fog at the south pole of Titan during late summer using observations from the VIMS instrument on board the Cassini spacecraft. While terrestrial fog can form from a variety of causes, most of these processes are inoperable on Titan. Fog on Titan can only be caused by evaporation of liquid methane; the detection of fog provides the first direct link between surface and atmospheric methane. Based on the detections presented here, liquid methane appears widespread at the south pole of Titan in late southern summer, and the hydrolgical cycle on Titan is current active. : submitted to ApJL Text South pole DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) South Pole |
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DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
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Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP FOS Physical sciences |
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Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP FOS Physical sciences Brown, M. E. Smith, A. L. Chen, C. Adamkovics, M. Discovery of fog at the south pole of Titan |
topic_facet |
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP FOS Physical sciences |
description |
While Saturn's moon Titan appears to support an active methane hydrological cycle, no direct evidence for surface-atmosphere exchange has yet appeared. It is possible that the identified lake-features could be filled with ethane, an involatile long term residue of atmospheric photolysis; the apparent stream and channel features could be ancient from a previous climate; and the tropospheric methane clouds, while frequent, could cause no rain to reach the surface. We report here the detection of fog at the south pole of Titan during late summer using observations from the VIMS instrument on board the Cassini spacecraft. While terrestrial fog can form from a variety of causes, most of these processes are inoperable on Titan. Fog on Titan can only be caused by evaporation of liquid methane; the detection of fog provides the first direct link between surface and atmospheric methane. Based on the detections presented here, liquid methane appears widespread at the south pole of Titan in late southern summer, and the hydrolgical cycle on Titan is current active. : submitted to ApJL |
format |
Text |
author |
Brown, M. E. Smith, A. L. Chen, C. Adamkovics, M. |
author_facet |
Brown, M. E. Smith, A. L. Chen, C. Adamkovics, M. |
author_sort |
Brown, M. E. |
title |
Discovery of fog at the south pole of Titan |
title_short |
Discovery of fog at the south pole of Titan |
title_full |
Discovery of fog at the south pole of Titan |
title_fullStr |
Discovery of fog at the south pole of Titan |
title_full_unstemmed |
Discovery of fog at the south pole of Titan |
title_sort |
discovery of fog at the south pole of titan |
publisher |
arXiv |
publishDate |
2009 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.0908.4087 https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.4087 |
geographic |
South Pole |
geographic_facet |
South Pole |
genre |
South pole |
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South pole |
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https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637x/706/1/l110 |
op_rights |
arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.0908.4087 https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637x/706/1/l110 |
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1766201195623350272 |