[X] My Assistant

[titanicrivers]

A fascinating presentation by Roe and Brown on a April 2008 storm exploding over the tropics of Titan and followed for a month using the Gemini North telescope with adaptive optics.
Here's the link: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_videos.jsp?cn...496&org=NSF

[volcanopele]

A few thoughts:

1) Mike Brown has a nice summary of their data on his blog: http://www.mikebrownsplanets.com/ . Very interesting description of the data, but his explanation for why this outburst of clouds formed.... Every time someone suggests cryovolcanism or venting or magic mountains as a reason why clouds form on Titan, God kills a kitten. Could those be reasons why, sure why not, but considering that we haven't even observed Titan in this way for an entire Saturnian year, we are aways off before we need to start coming up with unique reasons why cloud or storms systems form at certain locations. Let's get a handle on Titan's climate and how weather systems change over a Titan year before that.
2) Major Titan storms continue to avoid us....