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Last Updated: Friday, 25 April, 2003, 09:38 GMT 10:38 UK
Titan's icy surface revealed
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor

Scientists have peered through the smoggy orange haze of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and seen icy bedrock exposed on the surface.

Titan - Saturn's major moon
Titan may have hydrocarbon oceans
The observations reveal a surface that is not entirely covered by liquid and solid organic materials that rain out of the atmosphere, as was thought.

"Titan's surface reflectivity looks a lot like that of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. This is somewhat surprising because Titan is believed to have a lot of organic gook on its surface," says Caitlin Griffith, of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, US.

Titan will be visited by a probe next year that will parachute down to its surface sending back pictures.

Worse than city smog

Titan's atmosphere is about 10 times as massive as Earth's and is primarily nitrogen laced with methane and ethane.

It forms a dense hydrocarbon haze high in the moon's stratosphere as methane is destroyed by sunlight. The haze is much thicker than Earth's worst city smog.


Titan's atmosphere
Smog shrouds the moon
But what makes Titan's atmosphere almost opaque results in a rich chemistry on the surface.

The by-products of methane molecules destroyed in the Sun's ultraviolet light react with other molecules in Titan's atmosphere, forming organic substances that fall on to the moon's surface, blanketing the icy bedrock and forming lakes and oceans of hydrocarbons.

University of Arizona planetary scientist Jonathan Lunine and others theorise that atmospheric methane is replenished on Titan by a liquid cycle similar to Earth's hydrologic cycle. Others suggest that Titan's methane is produced by geologic activity.

"Assuming that Titan's atmosphere has existed over the moon's 4.6-billion-year lifetime, 800 metres of sediments would lie on the surface," says Dr Griffith.


Windows of light

Looking at Titan through an infrared "window" of light that can reach the surface, or regions between the very thick methane bands, the astronomers conclude that much of Titan's surface is exposed icy bedrock.

"Titan's spectra resemble Ganymede's spectrum, dominated by ice features," they say.

In 1994, the Hubble Space Telescope obtained its first images of Titan's surface, and images from others since show that Titan has large patches of darker terrain.


In July 2004, the Cassini spacecraft will arrive at Saturn and go into orbit. It will also drop a probe on to Titan.

Cassini will also map large chunks of Titan's surface at optimal haze-penetrating, near-infrared wavelengths.

The latest Titan research is published in the journal Science.

Close-up on Titan
07 Aug 00  |  Science/Nature
And now the weather on Titan...
19 Oct 00  |  Science/Nature
Oily ocean found on distant moon
30 Jul 99  |  Science/Nature
Mission zooms in on Saturn
04 Nov 02  |  Science/Nature

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