Saturn’s largest moon has shining regions.

By Dileep Thekkethil

BANGALORE: NASA has spotted glowing areas in the east and west poles of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.

According to NASA, these shining areas are patches filled with gases that glow when the sunlight passes through the Saturn’s moon. The shining regions of Titan were observed as shifting to the east as the dawn breaks over the southern region, and to the west as dusk falls over the northern one.

The new findings come from the team of international researchers led by NASA, who were studying the chemical make-up of Titan’s atmosphere. Martin Cordiner, astrochemist working at the NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said, “these kinds of east-to-west variations have never been seen before in Titan’s atmospheric gases. Explaining their origin presents us with a fascinating new problem.”

According to scientists, it is quite ‘unexpected’ that the gas clouds move from one pole to the other. This is something that defies the knowledge researchers had about Titan’s atmosphere till date. Mixed gases are formed in the mid atmosphere of Titan as the result of powerful winds moving from east to west. But as the altitude of the gases increase they separate from the mixture, a process that scientists are yet to find a reason. These winds are identical but smaller than the winds that are seen in Jupiter, which has the biggest storm in the whole universe called the great red spot.

The observations in Titan are made using Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), a highly precise network of antennas installed in Chile. The different light signals, passed over wavelengths by these antennas are decoded by scientists to display the gas filled glowing patches of Titan.

The observatory was able to produce a three dimensional image of Titan that maps different chemicals accumulated in its atmosphere. The 3D image was taken after an observation that lasted for not more than three minutes.

The chemical abundance in Titian’s atmosphere has been of interest to scientists. Titan’s atmosphere becomes a chemical lab as the chemicals come in contact with the sun’s rays. This coupled with the influence of Saturn’s magnetic field leads to the production of organic molecules that are made of carbon.

The researchers hope that any new findings in the complex chemical atmosphere of Titan can help in studying the early atmosphere of earth, which could have had the same features of the present-day Titan.