Fog discovered on Saturn's largest moon Titan

LOS ANGELES. December 20. KAZINFORM U.S. scientists have discovered fog moving across the south pole of Saturn's largest moon, Titan; Kazinform refers to Xinhua.
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Titan looks to be the only place in the solar system aside from Earth to have copious quantities of liquid (largely, liquid methane and ethane) sitting on its surface.

The new discovery suggests that Earth and Titan share yet another feature, which is inextricably linked with that surface liquid: common fog, according to researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

The presence of fog provides the first direct evidence for the exchange of material between the surface and the atmosphere, and thus of an active hydrological cycle, which previously had only been known to exist on Earth, the researchers said in a paper published in the latest issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Titan's south pole is spotted "more or less everywhere" with puddles of methane that give rise to sporadic layers of fog, said planetary astronomer Mike Brown of Caltech.

The researchers made their discovery using data from the Visualand Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) onboard the Cassini spacecraft, which has been observing Saturn's system for the past five years.

The VIMS instrument provides "hyperspectral" imaging, covering a large swath of the visible and infrared spectrum; Kazinform refers to Xinhua.

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