# Titan Update



## Maryjane (Nov 24, 2004)

_Casini has returned. That looks to me almost like continents and clouds_

A mosaic of nine processed images recently acquired during Cassini's first very close flyby of Saturn's moon Titan on Oct. 26, 2004, constitutes the most detailed full-disc view of the mysterious moon. 

The view is centered on 15 degrees South latitude, and 156 degrees West longitude. Brightness variations across the surface and bright clouds near the south pole are easily seen. 

The images that comprise the mosaic have been processed to reduce the effects of the atmosphere and to sharpen surface features. The mosaic has been trimmed to show only the illuminated surface and not the atmosphere above the edge of the moon. The Sun was behind Cassini so nearly the full disc is illuminated. Pixels scales of the composite images vary from 2 to 4 kilometers per pixel (1.2 to 2.5 miles per pixel). 

Surface features are best seen near the center of the disc, where the spacecraft is looking directly downwards; the contrast becomes progressively lower and surface features become fuzzier towards the outside, where the spacecraft is peering through haze, a circumstance that washes out surface features. 

The brighter region on the right side and equatorial region is named Xanadu Regio. Scientists are actively debating what processes may have created the bizarre surface brightness patterns seen here. The images hint at a young surface with, no obvious craters. However, the exact nature of that activity, whether tectonic, wind-blown, fluvial, marine, or volcanic is still to be determined.


----------



## Maryjane (Nov 24, 2004)

_Sory the article I wanted to post wouldn't work I keep geting crap about fishing and womens Tenis leages instead of the site I was trying to coppy of Titan and other moons of Saturn. I have run out of time trying to figure out what's up with that link. It changed to something else all together on the last try. _


----------



## Maryjane (Nov 25, 2004)

A gorgeous Dione poses for Cassini, with shadowed craters and bright, wispy streaks first observed by the Voyager spacecraft 24 years ago. The wispy areas will be imaged at higher resolution in mid-December 2004. Subtle variations in brightness across the surface of this moon are visible here as well. Dione's diameter is 1,118 kilometers, (695 miles). 

The image shows primarily the trailing hemisphere of Dione, which is the side opposite the moon's direction of motion in its orbit. The image has been rotated so that north is up.

*Saturn's moon Dion*


----------



## Brian G Turner (Nov 25, 2004)

Just to let you know, I've s[plit off the Mars post to the Mars thread.


----------



## Maryjane (Nov 25, 2004)

Thanks Brian I know I posted in the wrong post and didn't know how to change it so I just left it. "Tank ou velly velly much masta," the ancient Chinnee man with hands clasped says, taking little steps backwards and bowing several times before disapearing in the next room. Sticks head out through beed curtain momentarily and asks, "Wana buy a gremlin Masta? Real cheep." .


----------



## Maryjane (Dec 3, 2004)

*Another member to the family?*


Sun Might Have Exchanged Hangers-On With Rival Star

December 2, 2004
 By DENNIS OVERBYE 





The Sun may have captured thousands or even millions of
asteroids from another planetary system during an encounter
more than four billion years ago, astronomers are reporting
today. 

Such an interstellar ballet would explain many mysteries of
the outer solar system - including the strange behavior of
the recently discovered Sedna, the system's most distant
known object, which occupies a strange elongated orbit far
beyond Pluto. 

The astronomers' calculations, from supercomputer
simulations, suggest that gravity from the star at the
center of the other planetary system could have kicked
Sedna out of a more conventional orbit. In the process, the
Sun and the other star would have swapped their outer
entourages. Indeed, the astronomers estimate that there is
a 10 percent probability that Sedna itself was one of those
strangers. 

If the alien asteroids could be found and studied, these
bodies could provide testimony to the conditions under
which the Sun and the solar system formed, a time otherwise
lost in the mists. Astronomers say the Sun was born 4.5
billion years ago as part of a dense cluster of more than
1,000 stars that has long since disappeared. The star that
nearly collided with our solar system so long ago could be
on the other side of the galaxy by now. 

"I don't think anyone has considered that extrasolar
planets would be in our own solar system," said Scott J.
Kenyon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
He is the co-author, with Benjamin C. Bromley of the
University of Utah, of a paper being published today in
Nature. 

Their paper is the latest in a series of efforts to
consider an intruding star as a way of explaining the weird
properties of Sedna. 

"Sedna surprised the hell out of everybody," said Harold F.
Levison of the Southwestern Research Institute in Boulder,
Colo., who has proposed a slightly different intruder
scenario, with Alessandro Morbidelli of the Observatory of
the Côte d'Azur in France. 

The strange planetoid was discovered last spring. About 600
to 1,000 miles in diameter, Sedna travels in an elongated
oval of an orbit far outside the main planets of the solar
system, taking roughly 10,500 years to complete an orbit.
By comparison, distant Pluto takes about 248 years to
complete a trip around the Sun. At its closest approach,
Sedna, named after the Inuit goddess who dwells in the
frigid depths of the seas, will still be about seven
billion miles from the Sun, 75 times farther than the
Earth, which circles at a comfortable 93 million miles -
one astronomical unit, in cosmic lingo. 

Before Sedna's discovery, astronomers knew of no objects
beyond 50 astronomical units from the Sun, where a disk of
icy worlds known as the Kuiper Belt, left over from the
formation of Neptune and Uranus, abruptly falls off. (They
have deduced the existence of a vast halo of icy objects
from which comets occasionally descend, known as the Oort
cloud, extending much farther out, but these objects cannot
be seen.) 

Out there, Sedna is far beyond the gravitational influence
of the other planets, so how did it get so far out? Both
Dr. Kenyon's group and Dr. Levison's agree that a kick from
a passing star is the best and perhaps the only way to do
it, but they disagree on the details. 

Dr. Kenyon and Dr. Bromley conclude that a star and its
disk of planetary building materials passing from 160
astronomical units or so from the Sun could not only lift
Sedna into its present location, but also truncate the
Kuiper Belt, thus explaining its abrupt edge. 

Dr. Levison said his and Dr. Morbidelli's work favored a
more distant and gentle kick from a distance of about 800
astronomical units. He pointed out that Dr. Kenyon's
scenario predicted a plethora of objects in Sedna-like
orbits but slightly closer and thus easier to see that are
nonetheless not seen. 

Dr. Kenyon acknowledged that this was a potential problem.


Either encounter would also leave alien planetoids in our
solar system (and some of ours in the alien system)
orbiting at a steep angle to the plane in which the planets
go around. And so the next step is to search for such
objects. 

Sedna itself has only a moderately inclined orbit , the
astronomers say. A more likely candidate for an extra-solar
origin is another icy wanderer, known as 2000 CR105, about
half the size of Sedna, discovered out beyond Neptune in
2000. Its orbit is inclined 20 degrees to the planets. 

The detection of objects with inclinations of 40 degrees or
more, the authors write in Nature, "would clinch the case
for extrasolar objects in the solar system." 

Alan P. Boss, a planetary expert at the Carnegie
Institution of Washington, called the idea that Sedna could
have been a captured object formed around a different star
"intriguing even if it is a low-probability event." 

Dr. Bromley said the study of such objects could help
scientists understand how stars and solar systems form and
whether the forces that shaped Sedna and the solar system
are common to other systems. "We are a long way off from
having the technology to observe Sedna-like objects around
other stars," he wrote in an e-mail message, "but a
captured planet would be within our reach." 

Dr. Levison said these objects could be the few relics left
with information about the star cluster that gave birth to
the Sun. 

"All our cousins took off and we have no idea about the
size of our family," he said. "This gives us a little
cousin to study."


----------



## Maryjane (Dec 3, 2004)

*Titan dead or alive?*

*The pic wouldn't upload, to big I guess. *http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA06995_modest.jpg

As Cassini scientists work to understand the newly-exposed surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, they have found an interesting arrowhead-shaped feature, shown in the center of this synthetic aperture radar image. 

The feature is approximately 30 kilometers (19 miles) across, and it is formed from two straight lines that intersect. Looking more closely, one can distinguish other linear features that seem to follow the left side of the "arrow" and perhaps interact in some way with a dark spot. Straight lines may represent fractures or faults in the icy crust, or they may form from material that has flowed or has been shaped by wind, either recently or in the distant past. 

The area shown is about 115 kilometers (71 miles) wide and 170 kilometers (106 miles) high and is located near 52 degrees north latitude and 73 degrees west longitude. This radar image is part of a larger strip of data acquired on Oct. 26, 2004, as Cassini passed Titan at a distance of 1,200 kilometers (746 miles).


----------



## Maryjane (Dec 18, 2004)

_"Wow!" you can practically count the pebles in the craters in this shot of Dion Saturns moon_

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06162


----------



## Maryjane (Dec 18, 2004)

_The closest shot ever of Titan and much more specualtive information_

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/titan_flyby_041026.html


----------



## Maryjane (Jan 21, 2005)

*Seas of natural gas cover flamable Titan's surface*





http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6851959/


----------



## Maryjane (Jan 26, 2005)

*Hi, I think this is the last of the Titan updates for a while*

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/huygens_images_050114.html


----------

