Titan is one of the most Earth - like places in the Solar System . So this latest discovery of new clouds in this moon of Saturn ’s air is sure to please astronomers .
In a serial of images published on the raw imageCassini data site , the ballistic capsule has snap a number of images showing clouds drifting across the moon .
They were taken towards the terminal of last week as Cassini made its sweeping orbit around Saturn . The space vehicle is currently performing a telephone number of defy dives between Saturn and its rings as it approach its mission ending in September , using Titan as a gravitative backbone to do so .
It ’s not justcloudsthat are visible in the images , though . Sand sand dune and seas of liquid hydrocarbons can also be interpret . Titan is the only place other than Earth known to have bodies of liquid on its Earth’s surface .
But it ’s the clouds that are arguably most exciting this time around . “ I would say the scientists on the camera team are hoping for clouds , ” Trina Ray , a member of NASA ’s Cassini team , told IFLScienceback in April .
Why ? Well , although Titan has an extremely thick atmosphere , its swarm arefew and far between . Thus , scientist are cutting to see more of them and canvass them in more detail , to well understand some of the processes study place on this moonshine .
On Earth , our cloud are the result of our water supply Hz , with water evaporating , condense , and then precipitate . On Titan the same thing seems to happen , but with methane . Yes , in some locations it rains methane – although onlyonce every 1,000 yr .
We ’ve got a long list of other unreciprocated question about Titan , too . On that last flyby we mentioned earlier , scientist hop to measure the profundity of some of the lakes and sea around its Frederick North perch . We can expect results from those efforts at some stage in the futurity .
Some of these bodies of liquidity also have inscrutable “ wizardly island ” , bright regions that appear in some images but disappear in others . The cause of these could be literal pieces of state sinking and lift , bubbling liquid state , or something else entirely .
While there are no more closemouthed flybys of Titan planned – by Cassini or any spacecraft in the foreseeable hereafter – there ’s plenty of reason to go back there at some point , as evidenced by these latest photos .
