[X] My Assistant

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Scientists Solve the Mystery of Methane in Titan's Atmosphere
By Lori Stiles, UANews.org
March 1, 2006

Scientists Solve the Mystery of Methane in Titan's Atmosphere
By Lori Stiles, UANews.org
March 1, 2006

This refers to the Tobie et al. paper in the March 2, 2006, issue of Nature.

[volcanopele]

We may have at least a preliminary answer to one of their test very soon thanks to Monday's Titan pass that included some Radio Science doppler experiments. From the paper:

"If a subsurface ammonia–water ocean and a rocky core are present, as predicted by our model, Titan's tidal secondary potential Love number k2 should be higher than 0.3 and its moment of inertia factor C/MR2 should be lower than 0.33; these quantities should be measured by the Radio Science Subsystem later in the mission"

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

We may have at least a preliminary answer to one of their test very soon thanks to Monday's Titan pass that included some Radio Science doppler experiments. From the paper:

"If a subsurface ammonia–water ocean and a rocky core are present, as predicted by our model, Titan's tidal secondary potential Love number k2 should be higher than 0.3 and its moment of inertia factor C/MR2 should be lower than 0.33; these quantities should be measured by the Radio Science Subsystem later in the mission"

It's possible but very tough with just the T11 data. I think RSS won't be comfortable with a Love number until all the gravity data come in (i.e., T22, T33, and T38).

[volcanopele]

It's possible but very tough with just the T11 data. I think RSS won't be comfortable with a Love number until all the gravity data come in (i.e., T22, T33, and T38).

It makes wonder though if they could at least place some constraints with just the T11 data. they may not have a number they are comfortable with, I perfectly understand that.

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

It makes wonder though if they could at least place some constraints with just the T11 data. they may not have a number they are comfortable with, I perfectly understand that.

Yes, my understanding is that the stand-alone T11 gravity data can give a rough, first-order estimate for k2, perhaps enough for hypothesis testing. On the other hand, T11 by itself should give pretty good estimates for the other gravity coefficients: GM, C20, and C22.