Lakes in the limelight, the 2013 image bonanza continues |
Lakes in the limelight, the 2013 image bonanza continues |
Apr 28 2017, 06:05 AM
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#151
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2785 Joined: 10-November 06 From: Pasadena, CA Member No.: 1345 |
Oh! And I just realized my paper is freely available until May 11th.
So download early, cite often! Malaska, M.J., Hodyss, R., Lunine, J.I., Hayes, A.G., Hofgartner, J.D., Hollyday, G., Lorenz, R.D., 2017. Laboratory measurements of nitrogen dissolution in Titan lake fluids. Icarus, 289, 94-105. doi: 10.1016/j.icarus.2017.01.033. Link here: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1UlV4_Rp9r90d (The Supplementary material is freely available too. We dumped all the lab data as text files and lotsa explanatory text in the Supplementary Materials. It's in a zip file, but is only 285 kilobytes compressed. Enjoy!) -------------------- Some higher resolution images available at my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/
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Apr 28 2017, 07:49 AM
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#152
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3516 Joined: 4-November 05 From: North Wales Member No.: 542 |
Thanks Mike. We're off on holiday today so this will be great in-flight reading.
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May 3 2017, 03:20 PM
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#153
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Director of Galilean Photography Group: Members Posts: 896 Joined: 15-July 04 From: Austin, TX Member No.: 93 |
So, how long before you guys wrangle a stream/sand table into one of those refrigerated chambers? Smash a little water ice "sand" and place an ethane lake at the shallow end, and make it rain!
"Try this at home" is not likely, but maybe a similar experiment could be done with seltzer water and another commonly available solvent - alcohols or mineral oils? It's intriguing to think there could be an equivalent to thermohaline (thermonitro?) circulation on Titan. Colder parts of the seas cause surface methane to dissolve nitrogen and increase in density, descending to the bottom and drawing in new low density methane from warmer areas. So based on my read of Mike and Ralph's excellent paper, methane rain would be colder, denser, and carrying more nitrogen than the lake they are flowing into - so my bet is it tends to stay in submerged valleys as it enters the lake. If there is a gradient in the lake of methane/ethane mixing, then as the flow reaches deeper areas it will start encountering/mixing with more ethane, causing nitrogen release. Though I would expect this to happen all around the lake margins where the rain is occurring, instead of a single location. So if the Magic Island is caused by nitrogen bubbles, it must be something more localized like a thermal vent. And once these events start, they could be self-sustaining. Just amazing. Mike, based on your comments, it sounds like the N2 doesn't stay supersaturated very easily in the liquids. So it's not like a glass of cold water warming up and bubbles forming on its sides, but Mentos/Diet Coke? Sorry getting into this so late, life and all that. -------------------- Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks
-- "The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C Clarke Mother Nature is the final inspector of all quality. |
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May 5 2017, 02:14 PM
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#154
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2785 Joined: 10-November 06 From: Pasadena, CA Member No.: 1345 |
Nitrogen is perfectly happy to stay in liquid methane.
But if you "warm"* it up a little, decrease atmospheric pressure a little, or add a little ethane, then the nitrogen no longer be happy and it will come out. *"warm" is relative, we're still at around 91 K-ish. But there's already a huge difference in the amount of dissolved nitrogen between methane at 85 K and methane at 95 K. The expected densities change a bit due to saturation with nitrogen and we calculated that out and showed it in one of the figures in the paper. For liquids flowing across the surface, I'd think they might be the same temperature as the surroundings. Actually, if a methane/nitrogen river flows into a lake with a little ethane mixed in the higher density of ethane should win out and the incoming stream liquids would be less dense than the ethane-methane-(+not-as-much nitrogen) mix. The new liquids would want to float. So you might get a neat-o layering effect with methane-nitrogen on top, and slightly higher density ethane mix on the bottom. (Think tequila sunrise). That would set up the system for eventual compositional mixing/nitrogen exsolvation bubble-time. Whee! -------------------- Some higher resolution images available at my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/
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Aug 14 2017, 04:49 PM
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#155
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3516 Joined: 4-November 05 From: North Wales Member No.: 542 |
Recent views of the lakes and seas have been some of the best ever. I hope one or more of our image experts will make mosaics. This is just a single example from the raw images: https://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/i...1/N00286802.jpg
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Aug 15 2017, 01:19 AM
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#156
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Member Group: Members Posts: 866 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Santa Cruz, CA Member No.: 196 |
thanks! i wonder if this white blotchy streak in this image is a cloud formation, as it may be visible only at a narrow reflection angle, since its very dim in most other images, it also seems to have a dim complimentary dark streak (shadow?) next to (beneath?) it, which seems more apparent in images without the white streak..
Also, some of the recent Enceladus pics are not to be missed as well, need a gif animation... |
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Sep 13 2017, 04:06 PM
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#157
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3516 Joined: 4-November 05 From: North Wales Member No.: 542 |
Right at the last minute more wonderful lake portraits. What a store of treasure Cassini has provided!
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/images/casJPGFu...1/N00289114.jpg |
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Sep 19 2017, 10:56 PM
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#158
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Member Group: Members Posts: 866 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Santa Cruz, CA Member No.: 196 |
EDIT: i posted to the wrong thread, so here is a stitch of a collection of those new Titan lakes snapshots
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Apr 15 2019, 07:46 PM
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#159
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1887 Joined: 20-November 04 From: Iowa Member No.: 110 |
Saturn’s moon Titan sports phantom hydrocarbon lakes
Three features that were filled with liquid appear to have dried up https://www.sciencenews.org/article/saturn-...drocarbon-lakes |
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Apr 16 2019, 11:52 PM
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#160
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Member Group: Members Posts: 866 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Santa Cruz, CA Member No.: 196 |
More speculation being the lakes could seep into porous karst-like mesa terrain implying possible caves, aquifers, cenotes...
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Apr 10 2021, 12:32 AM
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#161
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Member Group: Members Posts: 610 Joined: 23-February 07 From: Occasionally in Columbia, MD Member No.: 1764 |
Short new paper out in JGR (Open Access) summarizing and contextualizing the bathymetry results from Cassini. Was quite pleased with the summary figure
http://doi.org/10.1029/2020JE006786 |
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Apr 10 2021, 03:42 PM
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#162
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
Those are some fantastically interesting results, Ralph! While the depths exceeded Cassini's ability to probe fully, that work characterizes the titanian seas quite nicely in terms of (much of the) depth and composition. These are the results that ones hopes for when the mission flies!
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Apr 10 2021, 06:25 PM
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#163
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8783 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Fascinating that ethane is being framed as a salt analogue in the seas. The chemistry of Titan is astonishingly alien.
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Apr 10 2021, 06:44 PM
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#164
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Member Group: Members Posts: 684 Joined: 24-July 15 Member No.: 7619 |
QUOTE Fascinating that ethane is being framed as a salt analogue in the seas. The chemistry of Titan is astonishingly alien. I wondered about that as well. I suspect they're using that term to mean it creates a denser fluid like saltwater in contrast to lower density freshwater. The changes in visibility could akin to the vertical salt line in rivers and estuaries where freshwater meets sea water but doesn't mix much because of density differentials. This makes sense, ethane mixed with methane will be significantly denser to pure methane. If the flow is slow enough, lakes look something like a 1960s layered-cocktail e.g. Tequila Sunrise, with methane-ethane on the bottom and methane on the surface. https://www.adn.com/science/article/mythbus...a/2013/02/05/#_ |
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Apr 11 2021, 01:51 AM
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#165
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
I notice that for the three northern tracks, where ethane abundance is estimated, it increases from north to south. With three data points, there's a 33% probability of getting them in order by random, so that's very far from significance, but I wonder if it means that methane could be entering from the north on a systematic basis. E.g., higher rainfall rates near the pole. I'm thinking of this by analogy with the salinity in the San Francisco Bay, where places near to where rivers flow in have lower salinity and the salinity is highest near the Golden Gate.
Of course, this is reading a lot into a little data. |
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