Astronomers observed a storm on Saturn's moon Titan

A telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea managed to capture for the first time clouds floating in the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon - Titan - considered by astronomers to be the body most similar to Earth in the entire solar system


A telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea managed to capture for the first time clouds floating in the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon - Titan - considered by astronomers to be the body most similar to Earth in the entire solar system.
From a distance of 1.3 million km, scientists from the California Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley watched it, with the most sophisticated telescope on Earth. They saw methane clouds near Titan's south pole.
Although the planets, and Jupiter in particular, are covered in clouds, for the first time cloud formation has been seen on a moon. said Michael Brown of Caltech.
Brown and Henry Rowe of Berkeley reported the discovery of the team led by them in the Thursday (19/12/2002) issue and the next day in the Astrophysical Journal.
According to the currently accepted theory, Titan may have been at a similar stage to Earth before its atmosphere began to support life. "We can't see rain," said Brown, "but I'm sure there are clouds forming there that disappear after a while." In any case, he adds, the rain that fell there would be liquid methane and not water.
The moon cannot support life. It has an atmosphere consisting of methane, ethane and cyanide and no oxygen at all. The cold there reaches minus one hundred degrees Celsius.
The cloud observation was made at Mauna Kea in late 2001 and early 2002. Titan, one of 30 moons orbiting Saturn, is about half the size of Earth and is much larger than our Moon.
Until now it was believed that its surface is exposed and unchanging and it is free of clouds. According to Barron, improvements in the resolution of the telescopes will help the study of Titan.
Also the Cassini spacecraft, which is on its way to a journey of several years to Saturn, will drop the European Huygens spacecraft to Titan in 2004.

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