Titan shoreline?

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:56:38 -0000, "Paul Neave"
wrote:

| Take a look at this latest image composite from Huygens:
|
| http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/...e_050117_H.jpg
|
| With my highly untrained eye, I see a shoreline running from west to south
| where the distributaries meet with the large dark area in the middle of the
| picture.
|
| To the north and east are clouds or possibly islands.
|
| Am I seeing too much? If the large dark area is a lake, a lake of what
| exactly?

Looks like a lake to me, but we can not know until the scientists have
canalized the information from all the instruments, and written the
academic papers. There is maybe to years work there, but hopefully they
will answer such simple questions first.

--
Dave Fawthrop dave hyphenologist co uk
Killfile and Anti Troll FAQs at
http://www.hyphenologist.co.uk/killfile.

Dave Fawthrop wrote:
| With my highly untrained eye, I see a shoreline running from west to south
| where the distributaries meet with the large dark area in the middle of the
| picture.
I agree. Descent was obviously over a lake or sea.
| To the north and east are clouds or possibly islands.

In the broad lake, I see the surface dotted wit many little white
puffs, which look like fog (surface cloudlets). Another possibility is
small icebergs. But who knows?

Looks like a lake to me, but we can not know until the scientists have
canalized the information from all the instruments, and written the
academic papers. There is maybe to years work there, but hopefully they
will answer such simple questions first.

At this level of image analysis, anybody's opinion is as good another,
depending on your recent experiences, since this imagery is similarly
evidendent to all of us. To my experienced pilot's eyes, it sure looks
like a lake with a shoreline with wetlands. The liquid needs recolving
liquid methane? Ethane? Propane. Any water? These are what the
scientists will soon resolve (or ought to!).


Angelo Campanella

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hold a reserve that would carry me through." - Charles A. Lindbergh.

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sound masking system!" - Anthony K. Hoover

"Every day, we perform on the stage that we set yesterday." AJC.

Both water ice and methane "ice" would sink in a liquid methane sea,
so the white areas are most likely either clouds or some kind of higher
elevation land mass, maybe covered with snow of some kind.

By the way, in the short video clip made from the 90+ frames taken
after Huygens landed I get the strong impression of an occasional
white flake falling through the field of view, drifting slightly to the

left as though there were a gentle breeze blowing from right to left.
Might be an artifact, but if it is, it is hard to understand how it
manages
to appear in several frames.
Clif Ashcraft

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 19:34:16 +0100, "Thierry" . wrote:


"PaulCsouls" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:56:38 -0000, "Paul Neave"
wrote:

...
I think it's a lake of goo. It's not like a single substance like
water so it doesn't evaporate neatly. It rains something like dirty
paint thinner. The more volatile substance evaporate, leaving a lake
of tar like stuff. Maybe there are amino acids in that junk.

Maybe... maybe not. Usually these things need of an environment much warmer.
There are reactions in the cold of space (20 K) due to electric properties
of atoms and molecules but nothing that looks like amino acids. This
structure need processes far more complexes.

All the difference is there. Titan is maybe like the primeral earth but it
has not its warmth (earth was very hot 4 and 3 bn years ago), even if the
ground is warmer that the theoretical model due to a bad internal
convection. This only fact reduces our chance to find something useful to
the pre or even biotic process very unlikely.

And thus the discovery of any cryogenic dynamic process evolving in this
atmosphere or at groun level will be a big event that will extend our list
of hostile spots where live is supposed to not exist much farther to the
cold areas of the Continue habitable zone.
Wait and see. In fact we 'll only get an confirmation of this fact the day
when the man will put his feet on titan. Until then, we 'll have data with
some degrees of confidence but probably not enough and accurate to say it is
black or white, there is live or not of titan.
Remember the Viking mission of Mars: under the detection level of the
various experiments (e.g. GEX, see
http://mars.spherix.com/spie2/Reprint76.htm) there could have millions life
forms undetected (and that created a huge debate in the scientific
communauty at that time).

Thierry
http://www.astrosurf.com/lombry/titan-brumes.htm

Some wild
organic chemistry is going on down there.

Paul C

Okay, maybe expecting amino acids is pushing it, but I still think
the process of hydrocarbon rains carving out river beds and then
evaporating in pools could lead to tar flats or pools of varnish like
stuff. I think the ethane and methane cycle will be different than the
water cycle.

Paul C

Too bad the probe didn't land in the dark area. All we got was rocks
and a lot of speculation. Did the probe use any instrument to bounce
signals off of the dark areas?

Now that Titan is unvealed, it will be a ong time before another probe is
sent.
Too bad Cassini wasn't fitted with a second, smaller probe "just in case" to
be used as a secondary source of information in the event that Huygens
found a big surprise. Which it did.

"MrNightguy" wrote:

Too bad the probe didn't land in the dark area. All we got was rocks
and a lot of speculation. Did the probe use any instrument to bounce
signals off of the dark areas?

Now that Titan is unvealed, it will be a long time before another probe is
sent.

Yeah, just tantalizing enough to create a lot of desire for another
mission to Titan, and it will be 5- to 10- years minimum from today
before another mission can reach Titan.

Too bad Cassini wasn't fitted with a second, smaller probe "just in case" to
be used as a secondary source of information in the event that Huygens
found a big surprise. Which it did.

Cassini will have over a dozen more close flybys of Titan. I believe
that complete radar mapping of Titan will be conducted during those
flybys. That should be able to obtain a lot more information about the
surface composition of Titan.

--
Scott M. Kozel Highway and Transportation History Websites
Virginia/Maryland/Washington, D.C. http://www.roadstothefuture.com
Philadelphia and Delaware Valley http://www.pennways.com

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 19:10:20 +0100, "Thierry" . wrote:

First what do you define as a shoreline ? You mean the area separating a
solid from a liquid ? You see the presence of liquid ? I don't see that...

How do you explain the prolific channels we see? Wind erosion doesn't
do that, only liquids.

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 03:56:41 GMT, "MrNightguy"
wrote:

Now that Titan is unvealed, it will be a ong time before another probe is
sent.
Too bad Cassini wasn't fitted with a second, smaller probe "just in case" to
be used as a secondary source of information in the event that Huygens
found a big surprise. Which it did.

Well, I think Titan has managed to elbow it's way beside Europa to tie
as second most interesting place to visit in the solar system.
Perhaps a balloon probe to hover under the haze and image the surface
at high resolution, looking for new channels, waves, rain, lightning,
etc.

same with me but my esa friends said "nope - artifacts of transmission
or spots on the lens". Qyuestion I have is what was the wind velecity?



Karatepe wrote:

Thierry wrote:

Indeed. In fact my first impression was that theses small features were
artifacts
But a close look (on bad pictures published on the Internet) seems to show
"holes" with shadows, etc and even a small rock running on the draining
channel.
But who could interpret such detail from such images... this is a
performance ! ;-)

Thierry



That was my first impression - "craters".... but in closer inspection of
the RAW data, they appear in the same place in many different images
which implies they are artefacts of the camera.

What was the wind speed at ground zero? ???
hsi


Paul Neave wrote:

Take a look at this latest image composite from Huygens:

http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/...e_050117_H.jpg

With my highly untrained eye, I see a shoreline running from west to south
where the distributaries meet with the large dark area in the middle of the
picture.

To the north and east are clouds or possibly islands.

Am I seeing too much? If the large dark area is a lake, a lake of what
exactly?

Paul.