Related papers: Titan's Obliquity as evidence for a subsurface oce…

Is there oceanic superrotation on exoplanets? Atmospheric superrotation, characterized by west-to-east winds over the equator, is a common phenomenon in the atmospheres of Venus, Titan, Saturn, Jupiter, and tidally locked exoplanets. The…

Titan, with its thick and hazy atmosphere, is a key world in our solar system for understanding light scattering processes. NASA's Cassini mission monitored Titan between 2004 and 2017, where the derived dataset includes a large number of…

Shematovich et al. (2003) recently showed plasma induced sputtering in Titan's atmosphere is a source of neutral nitrogen in Saturn's magnetosphere comparable to the photo-dissociation source. These sources form a toroidal nitrogen cloud…

Context: Saturn's massive gravity is expected to causes a tide in Titan's atmosphere, producing a surface pressure variation through the orbit of Titan and tidal winds in the troposphere. The future Dragonfly mission could analyse this…

Accurate determination of Cassini's spacecraft potential in Titan's ionosphere is important for interpreting measurements by its low energy plasma instruments. Estimates of the floating potential varied significantly, however, between the…

Saturn's moon Iapetus, which is in synchronous rotation, is covered by an optically dark material mainly on its leading side, while its trailing side is significantly brighter. Because longer wavelengths probe deeper into the subsurface,…

The texture, composition, and morphology of dunes observed in the equatorial regions of Titan may reflect present and/or past climatic conditions. Determining the physio-chemical properties and the morphodynamics of Titan's dunes is…

Atmospheric photochemistry on Titan continuously transforms methane and nitrogen gases into various organic compounds. This study explores the fate of these molecules when they land on Titan's surface. Our analytical exploration reveals…

Certain regions of Saturn's rings exhibit periodic opacity variations with characteristic radial wavelengths of up to a few hundred meters that have been attributed to viscous overstabilities. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer…

Saturn's largest satellite, Titan, has stratospheric wind speeds that may be up to ~210 m/sec [1], circling Titan in about a day compared to Titan's slow 16-day rotation. Theoretical models to explain such super-rotating winds are not well…

Numerous geological features that could be evaporitic in origin have been identified on the surface of Titan. Although they seem to be water-ice poor, their main properties -chemical composition, thickness, stratification- are essentially…

We outline a flagship-class mission concept focused on studying Titan as a global system, with particular emphasis on the polar regions. Investigating Titan from the unique standpoint of a polar orbit would enable comprehensive global maps…

Ethane is expected to be the dominant photochemical product on Titan's surface and, in the absence of a process that sequesters it from exposed surface reservoirs, a major constituent of its lakes and seas. Absorption of Cassini's 2.2 cm…

We retrieve vertical and meridional variations of methane mole fraction in Titan's lower troposphere by re-analyzing near-infrared ground-based observations from 17 July 2014 UT (Adamkovics et al., 2016). We generate synthetic spectra using…

The longevity of Cassini's exploration of Saturn's atmosphere (a third of a Saturnian year) means that we have been able to track the seasonal evolution of atmospheric temperatures, chemistry and cloud opacity over almost every season, from…

Investigating the overall brightness of planets (and moons) provides insight into their envelopes and energy budgets [1, 2, 3, 4]. Titan phase curves (a representation of overall brightness vs. Sun-object-observer phase angle) have been…

The Cassini mission in the Saturnian system is an outstanding opportunity to improve our knowledge of the satellites of Saturn. The data obtained thanks to this mission must be confronted to theoretical models. This paper aims at modeling…

We use a simple model of the dynamics of a narrow-eccentric ring, to put some constraints on some of the observable properties of the real systems.In this work we concentrate on the case of the `Titan ringlet of Saturn'.Our approach is…

The degree of alignment between a star's spin axis and the orbital plane of its planets (the stellar obliquity) is related to interesting and poorly understood processes that occur during planet formation and evolution. Hot Jupiters…

Using adaptive optics on the W.M. Keck II telescope we imaged Titan several times during 1999 to 2001 in narrowband near-infrared filters selected to probe Titan's stratosphere and upper troposphere. We observed a bright feature around the…