[X] My Assistant

[Decepticon]

2005-Apr-16 Titan close flyby & gravity assist (T5)
(best view to date) 950 From http://www.planetary.org/saturn/cassini_tour.html


Another look at the same hemisphere as in T4 ( My favorite so far, so much more interesting )

From above hours before closest approach. http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?t...porbs=1&brite=1

[deglr6328]

New ISS images and INMS data from T5 are now online.  Expect some additional releases from ISS early next week (at least they better, I know I spent long enough on those captions yesterday    )

INMS data from T5
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07865

Cassini's Views of Titan (wide angle color observation)
http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/view.php?id=1047

Additional analysis
http://volcanopele.blogspot.com/

WOW! I don't know what to think about this! I am of course elated to see the first mass spectra of Titan "air" but the fact that it's from Cassini and not Huygens is boggling!?! Why have we not seen any data release from Huygens GCMS at all ? What else can we glean from this spectrum? (The Chemist I'm lookin' at you! )

[TheChemist]

WOW!  I don't know what to think about this!   I am of course elated to see the first mass spectra of Titan "air" but the fact that it's from Cassini and not Huygens is boggling!?! Why have we not seen any data release from Huygens GCMS at all ?    What else can we glean from this spectrum? (The Chemist I'm lookin' at you!  )

You called me sir ?
This graph shows the extend of chemical reactions taking place on Titan's higher atmosphere. Lots of reactions, lots of different chemical products, with comparable molecular weights. The similarity in the broad collections of mass peaks (C3, C4, C5) shows these could be due to oligomers of a basic chemical unit (e.g. R, RR, RRR, etc.).
Finally, a thought is that if the C2,C3,C4 labels are correct, these molecules are rather unsaturated, i.e. they have a lot of double bonds (C=C, C=N).
For example, a saturated hydrocarbon with 5C, would have a molecular weight of 72 (12*5+1*12). instead we see in this graph that C5 lays between mass 60-70.
This is as far as I dare speculate with a graph with species abundancies, instead of the real MS data

Can I provide a link to a nice reference site by Andrew Dominic Fortes with respect to Titan ?
Surface Processes on Titan. A review of the literature
The following chapters from the above site are useful for relating to the MS data:
- The composition of the atmosphere
- The composition of the hazes
- Photochemical models

[centsworth_II]

I wonder, was the mass spectrometer placed on Cassini uniquely for analysis of Titan's atmosphere, or is it used for other studies in the Saturn system as well?