T73 Flyby Options

[ngunn]

Titan weather studies feature large in plans for the November encounter. From the latest 'looking ahead':

Outbound, VIMS will control pointing, mapping Titan's surface and cloud features. ISS will take images during this flyby by riding along with other instruments' observations, so no large mosaics are planned. The ride-along images should be useful for cloud monitoring, and if present, the clouds' motions and development can be tracked. The area will have been covered by the October 29 distant observation for comparison. Follow-up observations on November 13 and 14 will allow researchers to track clouds in the two days following the encounter. These will also cover the area that was under the arrow storm a month and a half earlier. An important goal will be to detect signs of surface changes that resulted from flooding caused by the storm's torrential rains.

[titanicrivers]

Probably conjectured but based on what happened after another large storm in late 2004 in the south polar region of Titan (see discussion and especially the photojournal link) here: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11147
My impression was the 2004 storm was a bit larger and thereafter frequent clouds remained over the s polar region which may have contributed additional precipitation. I would imagine many factors have to be considered (cloud heights, methane relative 'humidity', duration of the main storm cloud over a terrain, tropospheric winds, porosity and dryness of the terrain, state of any methanofers etc.) before predicting what might be seen on the ground in Senkyo (from last month's storm) in this T73 flyby. It will be exciting to see regardless!
One other question is whether any sign of flooding was seen on the ground after the April 2008 storm over S Belet?