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Introduction to special section: Titan: Pre‐Cassini view
Author(s) -
de Pater Imke
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2004gl020742
Subject(s) - titan (rocket family) , astrobiology , stratosphere , atmosphere of titan , solar system , geology , special section , equator , southern hemisphere , methane , troposphere , haze , spacecraft , remote sensing , environmental science , astronomy , meteorology , physics , geodesy , atmospheric sciences , latitude , climatology , engineering physics , ecology , biology
would explore Titan during its descent down to the surface and shortly after landing. While designs for the probe were being made, Lunine et al. [1983] suggested that Titan’s surface may be completely covered by a liquid hydrocarbon ocean, since their calculations showed that methane could only persist in Titan’s atmosphere for 10 7 yrs, i.e., much shorter than the age of our Solar System, unless it would be recycled back into the atmosphere. The probe was therefore designed to float if it would indeed land in an ocean, so it may be able to transmit data back to Earth for a short time after landing. [3] Approximately half a Titan year after the Voyager encounters, when it became spring in the southern hemisphere, Titan research received a boost with the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope and the development of speckle imaging and adaptive optics (AO) techniques on large, 8–10 m, telescopes. With these new imaging techniques Titan could be resolved (typical resolutions of a few 100 km), and images of its surface, troposphere and stratosphere were obtained. Many results have been published over the past decade, and several more are presented in this special GRL issue.