Titan's topography, strange.... Options

[titanicrivers]

Agree the horizontal ridge is not compatible with work done by Juramike as beautifully depicted in the channel and valley topic. http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...c=6430&st=0
However looking at T39 from another angle and using a Juramike color scheme for topography and applying the 3D conversion yields a better view. The ridge is now a series of eroded buttes and channels hidden in the previous image are in full view.
Edit: Sorry all. But I just checked and can't find my red-blue glasses anywhere! (Ya really should keep trying that little school house image a few posts back and it will come. I had to try on medical xrays for a week before I got it the first time.)

[AndyG]

My head's not wired to do cross-eyed 3d images. Here's my attempt at the above in redcyananaglyphovision :



It does look like a fascinating area.

Andy

[Juramike]

Yeah, my head's not wired for side by side views either.

And it is a very fascinating area, stay tuned...

[titanicrivers]

Here's a favorite spot on Titan for many of us. (with sincere apologies to those whose eyes cannot cross and focus!)

[algorimancer]

Very subtle topography in this one.


Incidentally, it would be really helpful if something like Stereo Photo Maker were embedded in browsers; perhaps a plug-in for Firefox could be an option someday. Then any stereo image could be adjusted on-the-fly to the preferences of each viewer; generally I don't bother with images posted as anaglyphs unless I'm sufficiently motivated to save them and then view them cross-eyed using SPM.

Here's a thought... how about a user preference setting for the UMSF site which displays stereo images per the user's preferences?

Apologies if I've drifted too far off-topic.

[titanicrivers]

T8 SAR part 2 contains lots of interesting topography as well as the resting site of the Huygens probe. Below is a cross-eye stereo approximately centered on the touchdown site.

[titanicrivers]

The recent Photojournal image http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16598 locating and naming mountain ranges prompted me to construct this figure from the overlapping SAR's of T8 and T61. The IAU names are from Middle-earth, the fictional setting in fantasy novels by English author J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973).

[Ron Hobbs]

I just saw this on the JPL web site:

Cassini Suggests Icing on a Lake

Who would have imagined? Like them, I thought methane ice would sink:

"Up to this point, Cassini scientists assumed that Titan lakes would not have floating ice, because solid methane is denser than liquid methane and would sink. But the new model considers the interaction between the lakes and the atmosphere, resulting in different mixtures of compositions, pockets of nitrogen gas, and changes in temperature."

I am reminded of Haldane's quote that the "universe may not only be stranger than we imagine" ... though our imagination seems to be doing a good job of keeping up.

I look forward to a discussion of this by the experts.

Mods: I will let you decide if this needs its own topic. I guess it does relate to Titanian topography.

[stevesliva]

I bet there's some fantastic small-scale topography created by the interaction of liquid flowing over solid. Moulins and ice caves... awesome stuff.

[Ron Hobbs]

Yeah, my mind is quivering with possibilities.

Maybe TiME will have to be an icebreaker.

My question is: Is methane (or ethane) ice at this temperature more like wax than the brittle water ice I am familiar with?

[JRehling]

A meta-comment on the complexity of Titan's atmosphere, liquisphere, and crust. The dynamics of water ice formation (in general, e.g., on Earth) still contain considerable unknown complexity. Research on snowflake formation is ongoing, and how water in vessels of freeze when cooled is quite a complex topic. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect

Given this, despite the fact that experiments on water freezing can be done easily and very cheaply, we may consider that Titan's weather, liquidynamics, and crustal evolution may likely be enormously complex, as it has multiple volatile species that undergo phase changes, whereas Earth has only one. The compounds on Titan dissolve in one another, undergo chemical interactions with one another, and this all may vary according to temperature, pressure, and UV radiation... It's mind boggling. We might observe 100 distinct locations on Titan, then be startled by what we find in location #101. I noticed that after living 20+ years in places with snowy winters on Earth I could still be surprised by the phenomena that arise under particular combinations of precipitation, thawing, and freezing. On Titan... I don't think we'll ever "hit bottom" when it comes to understanding all of the crazy things that might happen there. What happens when one condensate falls upon liquid... what happens if it happens at night... what happens at sunrise when one substance reaches dew point... even ten in situ missions aren't going to answer all these questions.

[Bill Harris]

At first glance the weathering, erosional and depositional processes on a simple planet like Mars would seem to have been easy to understand, but the closer we look at Mars the more complex and alien it becomes.

These processes and conditions on Titan are almost inconceivable and the hydrologic cycle (liquid->gas->liquid) has to be more complex by orders of magnitude.

I remember my astonishment while reading JuraMike's wonderful posts on the Atmospheric Chemistry of Titan over the last few years.

--Bill

[brellis]

All these years after the Huygens probe landed, I still wonder - what if Cassini had held on to the Huygens probe until it had pinpointed a lake? Could it have aimed Huygens accurately enough to splash into it? I know there are many reasons why the Huygens plunge needed to happen right away. It's just so tantalizing to imagine having a probe (or several) available this deep into the mission!

I don't want to drag this discussion off-topic. Perhaps this post can be moved to a better place if so.

[JRehling]

Titan has many types of terrain: IR bright, IR dark brown (dunes), IR dark blue (methane-wet sand), 5-µm-bright material (evaporite / HC3N?), and the lakes and seas to name five.

It was a magnificent bit of serendipity to have Huygens enter right on the boundary between two terrain types, to give us high-resolution descent imaging of one (IR bright) and land directly on another (IR dark blue), showing us not only the nature of both of those with resolution greater than any of Cassini's instruments, but the geophysical nature of the boundary. And given that both the dunes and standing liquid have a profound degree of blah-ness to their relief, Huygen's landing site (HLS) would be a very hard act to top. It's easy to take the knowledge we have of the HLS - the channels, the pebbles, the wet sand, the methane release that followed landing - as a given and wish for more, but it was a bonanza I would hate to (hypothetically/magically) lose in exchange for imaging of the isotropic surface of a lake. Frankly, I think it was nearly perfect, given the single opportunity.

[walfy]

Converted some of those cross-eyed for red-cyan glasses: