Rev 141: Titan, distant view after the storm Options

[titanicrivers]

“On December 5, ISS will image a half-phase Titan at a distance of 2.5 million kilometers (1.55 million miles). The camera will image the sub-Saturn hemisphere of the satellite, allowing researchers to continue to study the recent weather changes that have been occurring across Titan's equatorial region and that have brought methane rain to select regions of previously dry terrain”.
Seems a shame the NAC or WAC couldn’t take a few images before Dec 5th say on the second. Based on the SSS it would seem the area in S Senkyo (around 310 W and -20 ) that almost certainly had intense precipitation is better seen on the 2nd below left, and may be beyond the terminator and invisible on the 5th below on right. Also I couldn't confirm with the SSS that Titan would be as close as 2.5 Mkm on the 5th ???

[volcanopele]

Titanicriver kinda let the cat out of the bag a week early, but that's okay. I'm stunned it took THAT long. Anyways...

Cassini Sees Seasonal Rains Transform Titan's Surface
http://www.ciclops.org/view/6744/

Image Releases are at:
http://www.ciclops.org/view_event/155/Meth..._Titans_Deserts

That's the press release for our paper now published in Science regarding the late September/October arrow storm and equatorial cloud breakout and subsequent surface change. We saw a substantial area along the southern boundary of Belet darken as a result of these storms in October, as well as smaller areas near the southern boundary of Senkyo (first spotted in December) and in southwestern Adiri. More recently, as the "waters" have receded (or simply dried up), patches of brighter material have been spotted. We are still trying to figure out the best explanation for this, but one likely one is that the rains have cleaned off "gunk" off portions of Titan's surface, revealing brighter material beneath the...ummm....gunk (not a scientific term I know, but it is easier to say than unidentified hydrocarbon surficial material).

For those who have access to Science you can find our paper at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6023/1414 . If you don't have access, send me a pm with your email addy and I will send a copy along to you. I just need to download the reprint myself first

In addition to publicizing findings from these last few exciting months, we are also announcing findings from our cloud monitoring campaign during the extended mission that ended, coincidentally enough with the observation of the arrow storm. These observations included what we call "caboose" observations, cloud tracking periods added on in the 2-3 days before or after a Titan flyby. These allowed us to capture movies of clouds going around the north pole of Titan as well as a set of streaks at the moon's southern mid-latitudes back in December 2009. These movies are now posted on the CICLOPS website. The original paper was published in GRL here: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2010GL046266.shtml Unfortunately, I don't have institutional access to GRL, so if anyone does, and can send it to me, then I can email it to anyone who requests that one.

Note: I now the GRL paper (actually I had it all along, but I thought it was a draft version...). So if you want that one too, let me know.

[rlorenz]

Image Releases are at:
http://www.ciclops.org/view_event/155/Meth..._Titans_Deserts

I had the JSC Earth Observation Lab dig out and scan that last image, which I found
initially in a Bulletin of the American Meteorological Soc. paper.... Gemini 4 was the first
US manned mission over 1 day - as well as Ed White's famous spacewalk, there was also an
Earth imaging experiment, using the 70mm Hasselblad camera with an 80mm lens, which
caught the first good spaceborne image of sand dunes (if I am not wrong) as well as various
cloud and landscape images including this one.

An analysis in the literature shortly after the flight showed the dark streak saw about 2 inches
of rainfall, whereas the undarkened area had less than 0.25 inch.

I'd be interested if people know of examples of this effect since (seems like these dark streaks
should be observed a lot...?)