More intrigue from Saturns' Moon Titan

[Aethon]

See the lovely lakes...

http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/cassini/icy-aquifers-on-titan-transform-methane-rainfall/index.html#.VAj7ZfldWYc

[Scotius]

Partially melted dirty snowball

[Jesrad]

Oil-stained snowball, rather

[Tommygun]

Hydrocarbon flavored snow cone.

[Jesrad]

Right. But WHAT FLAVOR is it ? Inquiring minds demand to know !

[Oafman]

Sunlight reflecting off Titan's seas, taken by Cassini:

[K^2]

Right. But WHAT FLAVOR is it ? Inquiring minds demand to know !

Methyl mercaptan. You know, for safety reasons.

[PakledHostage]

Methyl mercaptan. You know, for safety reasons.

Eewww!

[10 chars]

[TheFlyingPigs]

Right. But WHAT FLAVOR is it ? Inquiring minds demand to know !

We need to get Bob to Titan to taste Interstellar Ice-cream!*

*WARNING: May not be Interstellar or Ice-cream

[lajoswinkler]

Oil-stained snowball, rather

No oil there.

[TheGatesofLogic]

Well, the flavor might be unknown, but the smell would entirely depend on the frequency of reactions between the water ice and the organic molecules. It will almost certainly smell more like glue and nail-polish than most anything else save for a few nitrogen based esters whose scents I am unfamiliar with. I expect predominantly nitrillic ester formation.

Edit: now that i think of it... Nitrate esters would be extremely common on the surface if there is ANY significant reaction between the water ice and organic nitriles. Titan's surface would be covered with explosives!!! We clearly need this in KSP

Edited November 4, 2014 by TheGatesofLogic

[Tommygun]

Sunlight reflecting off Titan's seas, taken by Cassini:

I wonder if that is a false color image.

I'm surprised the sun's reflection is that yellow unless it is being tinted by titan's smoggy atmosphere.

[Kryten]

I wonder if that is a false color image.

It's near-infrared. Any true colour image of Titan is a fuzzy orange ball.

[How2FoldSoup]

I wonder if that is a false color image.

I'm surprised the sun's reflection is that yellow unless it is being tinted by titan's smoggy atmosphere.

It's most definitely false colour. Its dense cloud layer blocks all visible light from the surface. If you note the caption on the lake picture that's floating around it says it uses infrared. Radar and IR are the only way we can penetrate the clouds and probe the ground.

Here's a shot Cassini took in visible wavelengths

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Titan_in_natural_color_Cassini.jpg

[lajoswinkler]

I wonder if that is a false color image.

I'm surprised the sun's reflection is that yellow unless it is being tinted by titan's smoggy atmosphere.

It's false. Normally, you'd use grayscale for anything else than visible light, but in some cases certain wavelengths are given colors to distinguish differences.

Well, the flavor might be unknown, but the smell would entirely depend on the frequency of reactions between the water ice and the organic molecules. It will almost certainly smell more like glue and nail-polish than most anything else save for a few nitrogen based esters whose scents I am unfamiliar with. I expect predominantly nitrillic ester formation.

Edit: now that i think of it... Nitrate esters would be extremely common on the surface if there is ANY significant reaction between the water ice and organic nitriles. Titan's surface would be covered with explosives!!! We clearly need this in KSP

True. I don't know why people think of it as "crude oil heaven". It has no connection with heavy hydrocarbons at all. Light hydrocarbons have either no smell at all or they have an etheral smell of butane/pentane isomers. Other scents come from nitriles and alike, though at those temperatures, not much of it is in atmosphere. If one would take a sample of the ground and carry it in habitat where it's warm and breathable, it would probably smell like typical low carbon organic compounds.

Edited November 5, 2014 by lajoswinkler

[Hydrazine_Soup]

Oil?

 

Edited March 5, 2020 by Hydrazine_Soup

[Tommygun]

Here's a shot Cassini took in visible wavelengths

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Titan_in_natural_color_Cassini.jpg

Never realized it was that yellow. I always thought it was gray with a tint of yellow/brown.

Well that makes China's air quality look almost quaint.

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

It's most definitely false colour. Its dense cloud layer blocks all visible light from the surface. If you note the caption on the lake picture that's floating around it says it uses infrared. Radar and IR are the only way we can penetrate the clouds and probe the ground.

Here's a shot Cassini took in visible wavelengths

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Titan_in_natural_color_Cassini.jpg

Incidentally, is there any way to determine what the true color of Titan would be if we could see through its atmosphere? Sort of like how maps of Venus's surface are always depicted as orange-red, but I'd imagine it would actually be dark gray?

[How2FoldSoup]

Incidentally, is there any way to determine what the true color of Titan would be if we could see through its atmosphere? Sort of like how maps of Venus's surface are always depicted as orange-red, but I'd imagine it would actually be dark gray?

Coming right up

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Huygens_surface_color_sr.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Huygens_surface_color.jpg

These two photos were taken from the huygens lander that accompanied the Cassini spacecraft. I believe these are real colour images.

[Kryten]

I'm not sure about the colour, but the contrast is very heavily enhanced. The imaging team compared it to taking images on a tarmac car park at midnight.

Edited November 5, 2014 by Kryten

[Tommygun]

I'm not sure about the colour, but the contrast is very heavily enhanced. The imaging team compared it to having image on a tarmac car park at midnight.

I've wonder about that myself. It's so far from the Sun and then it's under heavy clouds.

It might be hard to tell the difference between day and night.

[lajoswinkler]

Incidentally, is there any way to determine what the true color of Titan would be if we could see through its atmosphere? Sort of like how maps of Venus's surface are always depicted as orange-red, but I'd imagine it would actually be dark gray?

Human eye on Venus would witness luminosity similar to a day on Earth with total cloud overcast. The color would be yellowish-orange, but not very saturated. The ground seems to have no color of its own, and has very low albedo, so it looks pretty much like volcanic basalt on Earth. Because of the atmosphere, it has a yellowish-orange tinge. At least that's what several Soviet probes figured out.

Titan would look incredibly dark. Saturn is so far away from the Sun, and the smog in Titan's nitrogen atmosphere attenuates the light even more. The color of the environment is somewhat orange-tan, with rather high albedo surface. Certainly not as snow. Titan's methane/ethane lakes, on the other hand, are a mistery. Given the fact they've probably accumulated lots of reddish tholins, combined with the fact they're near infrared absorptive, otherwise colourless methane/ethane could be red.

Granted, there's a difference between reflective and transmissive color. There is stuff that can be green when you look at its surface, and red when you look at a light source through it. So it's difficult to come up with an answer.

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

I've wonder about that myself. It's so far from the Sun and then it's under heavy clouds.

It might be hard to tell the difference between day and night.

Saturn (and Titan) range between approximately 9 and 10 AU from the sun, so on average they receive about 1% the sunlight Earth does. Daylight on Earth maxes out at about 100,000 lux, so Saturn's airless moons would get about 1,000 lux, about the same as an overcast day on Earth. If cloud cover on Earth reduces the light reaching the surface by 99%, we can assume Titan's haze blocks about the same amount, meaning full daylight on Titan might be about 10 lux. This is darker than a typical well-lit room at night, but still comparable to twilight on Earth. Once our eyes adjusted, humans could probably still see some color, similar to a roadway poorly lit by street lights.

The brightest object in the night sky would be Saturn: the full moon, which has an angular diameter of about half a degree and an albedo of 0.14, and receives as much sunlight as Earth, provides up to 0.2 lux. Saturn seen from Titan has an angular diameter of about 5.5 degrees, an albedo of 0.35, and receives 1% the sunlight of Earth's moon, meaning it should be about three times brighter than the full moon. Unfortunately, with Titan's atmosphere blocking 99% of that light, "full saturn" on Titan will be about 0.006 lux. At best, this is equivalent to a clear but moonless night on Earth or an overcast night with the moon out. In either case, this is dark enough that the human eye can't distinguish color or detail.

However, only on one side of Titan is Saturn visible in the sky. In the other hemisphere, nights would be absolutely pitch black, with the faint light from stars and Saturn's other moons being unable to penetrate the atmosphere.

So while Titan's surface may be dark (darker than Pluto's in fact), you could definitely distinguish day from night.

(and no, I did not include light from Saturn's rings, because from the moons of Saturn you're viewing the rings basically edge on, making them very faint).

Edited November 8, 2014 by Armchair Rocket Scientist

[lajoswinkler]

At best, Saturn viewed from Titan it would look like a brighter region of the smog filled sky. One brighter region for Sun and one for Saturn.

[Aethon]

I'll just leave this here. It's too cool for school.

http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/cassini/pia18291/#.VFuiA_nF-Yd