A clearer view of Titan.Peering through the hydrocarbon haze that shrouds Saturn's moon Titan, astronomers have obtained the sharpest images ever taken of the surface of this mysterious body. Infrared pictures reveal a complex terrain of bright regions that could be continents of ice and rock, as well as dark areas that could be oceans of hydrocarbons. Researchers have long been interested in Titan because of its chemistry. They suspect that some of the organic compounds in its atmosphere could have rained onto its moon's surface and created a complex mixture similar to that on Earth's surface Noun 1. Earth's surface - the outermost level of the land or sea; "earthquakes originate far below the surface"; "three quarters of the Earth's surface is covered by water" surface before life emerged (SN: 11/1/97, p. 284). To observe Titan, Claire E. Max of the Lawrence Livermore Lawrence Livermore may refer to:
To overcome image blurring due to Earth's rapidly changing atmosphere, the astronomers took extremely fast snapshots. By combining hundreds of these images, they created a map of Titan's surface that is sharper than that taken by the Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the first large optical orbiting observatory. Built from 1978 to 1990 at a cost of $1.5 billion, the HST (named for astronomer E. P. Hubble) was expected to provide the clearest view yet obtained of the universe. (SN: 11/12/94, p. 309), Max says. She and her colleagues describe their results in the July ICARUS Icarus, in Greek mythology Icarus: see Daedalus. Icarus, in astronomy Icarus, in astronomy: see asteroid. Icarus Daedalus’s son whose wings disintegrated in flight when approaching the sun. [Gk. Myth. . The high-precision images "are better than the Hubble images," says Jonathan I. Lunine of the University of Arizona (body, education) University of Arizona - The University was founded in 1885 as a Land Grant institution with a three-fold mission of teaching, research and public service. in Tucson. Some of the very dark areas in the new Titan map "could indeed contain liquid," he adds. If so, it would be the first open sea discovered beyond Earth. Images of Titan may soon become even sharper, notes Lunine. Livermore researchers are testing an automated system that will allow Keck's mirror to compensate directly for the distortions generated by Earth's atmosphere. Furthermore, a probe on the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft is scheduled to parachute onto Titan in 2004. That mission could settle the question of whether this moon has a dark sea. |
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