Titan
Temperature of Titan
"Earth
and Titan are similar in that both have a
greenhouse effect, and an anti-greenhouse
effect ... Titan as compared to Earth is
much colder than Earth in its temperature
due to the solar constant but far more
dense in its atmosphere due to presence
of many hydrocarbons, methane ..."
-- Discussion
Scientists Discover
Anti-Greenhouse Effect on Titan
"The
study results define an anti-greenhouse
effect that reduces Titan's surface
temperature by 16 degrees Fahrenheit. The
effect is produced by a thick, organic
haze in Titan's upper atmosphere that
absorbs solar light, but transmits
reflected infrared radiation.
-- NASA, Kennedy Space Center
Titan- What we know
and what we hope to find out
"Titan
is the only moon in the solar system with
a thick atmosphere surrounding it. - The
atmospheric pressure near Titan's surface
is 60% greater than Earth at sea level
..."
-- NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Titan in a Fish
Tank
(for grades 3-8)
"Building a "Titan in a Fish
Tank" will introduce students to
this mysterious, smog-shrouded
satellite"
-- Supplement for NASA's Saturn Teacher's
Guide
Has Titan got answers to
life in space ?
"A team from the Infra-red Space
Observatory (ISO) studying Titan found it
has a thick atmosphere of orange clouds.
These clouds contain organic chemicals
similar to compounds which gave rise to
life on Earth four billion years
ago."
-- BBC News, SciTech, 4/7/98
Can life evolve in such
satellites (moons) of a planet?
"While Titan may contain one of the
richest stores of organic molecules in
the Solar Sytem, it is unlikely that
these compounds have nurtured the origin
of life on the surface of that moon of
Saturn because of the lack of liquid
water."
-- NASA's Quest Project
Titan
Factoids
-- The Nine Planets
The inside of Titan is
probably made of ice, so scientists guess
that the surface might be covered with
ice, and maybe have an ocean of methane!
Mo' factoids
-- Windows on the Universe, University of
Michigan
Red Giant Could Breathe Life
Into Titan
"Seven billion years from now, long
after the sun has swollen up and
heat-sterilized Earth, conditions may be
just right for life on Saturn's largest
moon Titan"
-- American Association for the
Advancement of Science News Service,
11/18/97
Saturn's moon yields answers
"Both Earth and Titan have
atmospheres made up mostly of nitrogen, a
fact that makes the distant moon one of
our planet's closest kins. In a paper in
Friday's issue of the journal Science,
the researchers explore the secret of how
Titan's atmosphere has maintained itself,
when it should have run out of a key
chemical. "
--
Cassini to Saturn and Titan
"The Cassini mission will send an
orbiter spacecraft to the ringed planet
Saturn, and deploy an instrumented probe,
Huygens, that will descend to the surface
of Saturn's moon Titan. "
-- NASA, Cassini Project
Water (ice) on planets
and moons
-
- Ice on the Moon
"The latest
estimates based on Lunar
Prospector data indicate that the
amount of water ice trapped at
the Moon's poles may be up to six
billion metric tons, over ten
times earlier estimates."
-- National Space Science Data
Center, 9/3/98
-
- Moon Water
"The Clementine satellite
began its moon-mapping mission
two and a half years ago ... A
radar analysis
of the dark side of the moon
revealed an anomaly that
researchers can best be explained
as a small lake of frozen
water... By coincidence, the news
of water on moon comes at a time
when NASA is getting ready to
launch another unmanned mission
to the Moon, one of the goals of
which is to look for water. The
Lunar Prospector ...
-- Access Excellence (Genentech,
Inc., sole sponsor), national
educational program for biology,
12/3/96
-
- Clementine
Collection
Images
-- Naval Research Laboratory
(NRL)
-
- Lunar Prospector
Homepage
"The Prospector Mission team
announced in a press conference
on March 5that the tiny, low
budget craft has found the answer
to one of the most hotly debated
questions in lunar science.
Prospector HAS found somewhere
between 10 to 300 million tons of
water-ice scattered inside the
craters of the lunar poles."
-- NASA, Ames Research Center
-
- Moon's River
"... in craters near the
lunar poles (which can't be seen
from Earth) the lunar soil
apparently contains ice
crystals."
-- The Why Files, 3/26/98
-
- Is ice on Jupiter's
moon a sign of life?
"New images of Jupiter's
moon Europa that show an icy
surface riddled with cracks and
fissures provide tantalizing
clues that water may exist there,
according to NASA scientists.
"
-- CNN, 4/9/97
Titan Similar to
Early Earth? Water Found on Saturn Moon
"The discovery of water vapor in the
atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest
moon, may indicate that conditions there
duplicate those that gave birth to life
on Earth"
-- ABCNews.com, 4/7/98
The Planet Mercury - ice in
the craters?
"The images of Mercury's surface
shown below were produced with radar ...
The brighter colors show areas that
reflect radar microwaves best. These
regions caused great excitement when they
were discovered. Astronomers believe that
the shiny circles near Mercury's Poles
are patches of ice in the bottoms of
craters. Intense sunlight falling on
Mercury never reaches these ice patches
because the raised crater rims keep them
in shadow at all times."
-- Astronomy Department, University of
Michigan
Mercury polar ice
"Since
Caltech/JPL observations suggest possible
water ice at the north and south poles of
the planet Mercury, it is now feasible to
consider a new class of human exploration
missions to these sites, and three
classes of robotic precursor missions
that would precede human exploration
(impact/ orbital spectroscopy, lander,
sample-return)."
-- American Institute of Aeronautics,
Inc., and Space Studies Institute
Venus
Possiblity Of Venus
Harboring Life May Not Be So Far-fetched
"Some
four billion years ago when the sun was
40 percent cooler than today, Earth and
Mars probably were frozen ... But Venus,
closer to the sun, may have had warm
liquid oceans and a mild climate at the
time."
--Eukalert, 2/3/97
Life on Venus?
"Although Mars has grabbed the
headlines as a potential site of
extraterrestrial life, Venus may have
been the original source of life in our
solar system ... Four billion years ago
the sun was 40 percent cooler than today.
During that time, Earth and Mars probably
were frozen. Venus, however, is closer to
the sun, and may have had warm liquid
oceans and a mild climate at the time
"
-- Access Excellence (Genentech, Inc.,
sole sponsor), national educational
program for biology, 2/5/97
Comparisons to Earth
Factoids
-- Digital Science
Venus
Mo' factoids
-- The Nine Planets
Chapter 6: Life on Venus
"Is there life on Venus? Could there
be life on Venus? The standard answers
are "No and NO!". Venus is
usually dismissed in a paragraph or two
before an extensive discussion of the
prospects for life on Mars, the icy moons
Europa and Titan, and Earth-like planets
elsewhere in the universe. Where life is
concerned, Venus is consistently voted
"least likely to succeed". In
my opinion, this quick dismissal is not
justified."
-- Venus Revealed
Molten rivers of chalk on
venus
"... why should Venus's volcanoes
have such large supplies of carbonate
rocks? Perhaps in the planet's early days
it had a milder climate and vast oceans.
The carbonates were laid down on the
seabed, like chalk and limestone on
Earth. Then the greenhouse effect took
over, and the oceans boiled away. Venus's
volcanoes have now melted its store of
carbonates, and in the new hothouse
climate they have flowed fast and far, to
form the longest "rivers" in
the Solar System. "
--independent.co.uk
Venus
Images with annotations
-- Welcome to the Planets, California
Institute of Technology
