Titan – Of the 146 known, Saturn's largest moon It is a strange body among the various celestial bodies in the solar system. this moon, Larger than the planet Mercury Which only lost the race for the title of largest to Ganymede, and it is also the only moon in the solar system that It has an intense atmosphereconsisting mainly of nitrogen, such as terrestrial, and Liquid oceans on the surface, in the case of hydrocarbons such as methane. Thus, Titan is commonly referred to as The star in the solar system that is most similar to Earth.
Titan study
In addition to these characteristics, the fact that it is In the ground neighborhoodcosmologically speaking, makes Titan desirable as a kind of proving ground Future observations of extrasolar planetary atmospheres – Any planets outside the solar system.
In this context, the New study For an international team led by researcher Rafael Silva from Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA), which analyzed solar radiation reflected by Titan's atmosphere, based on data acquired by the High Resolution UV-Vis Spectrograph. uvesmounted on the Very Large Telescope (VLT), l Esoin Chile.
The team managed He identified not only nearly a hundred active signatures in the visible spectrum corresponding to methane, but also active signatures corresponding to three-carbon (C)3)It is a molecule that has not yet been discovered in the solar system except in the material surrounding the nucleus of a comet, and has never been discovered on a planet.
In visible light, Titan has a uniform orange appearance, made up of a haze of complex organic molecules.
On the right, an image obtained in infrared (converted to visible color) has been added, which reveals the geography of lakes, rivers and canals, not water, but hydrocarbons. Infrared radiation can penetrate the haze and provide information about the surface of this moon of Saturn. source: NASA.
The study is published in the scientific journal Planetary and space sciences Permissible Describe methane in more detail, regarding the absorption signature in the visible spectrum, which helps determine the wavelength and intensity of 97 different emissions in the visible range that characterize it. “Even in high-resolution spectra, the methane absorption lines are not strong enough with the amount of gas that we can obtain in a laboratory on Earth, but on Titan we have a complete atmosphere, and the path that light takes through the atmosphere can be determined hundreds of kilometers away,” he recalls. Rafael Silva. This makes the various bands and lines, which have a weak signal in laboratories on Earth, very visible on Titan, adds the leader of this study.
About the Tri-carbonAlthough the results indicate its presence on this moon, it needs to be confirmed, because the bluish signal is fainter and rarer in the results obtained. Carbon tricarbonate is an “extremely unstable” molecule that can only exist in high-energy environments — such as in Titan’s upper atmosphere, which receives solar radiation that provides the energy needed for chemical reactions to occur — and high amounts of carbon, so that it is constantly being produced and destroyed. .
Artist's conception of Titan's surface. This moon of Saturn is one of the most Earth-like planets in the solar system, despite the temperature there reaching -179 degrees Celsius. It is the only place in the solar system that contains lakes, but they are hydrocarbon lakes. These molecules, composed only of carbon and hydrogen, act like water on Earth, participating in the methane cycle, with rainfall, river formation and evaporation. source: NASA.
the future
If this study allows on the one hand Paving the way for searching for these materials in the atmospheres of exoplanetsResearch mixed with research on planets that may have life. On the other hand, it may also be useful to reveal more about us. This is because of all the atmospheres we know of in the solar system, Titan's atmosphere is the one most similar to the one we think existed on early Earth. Although researchers don't expect to find life on a cold world like Titan, understanding its complex atmospheric chemistry “allows us to draw parallels to what we think was the atmosphere of early Earth at a time before life arose,” Silva notes. National Geographic.
“Experience gained in difficult analyzes like this can inform infrared observations using the James Webb Space Telescope, or JST,” notes Pedro Machado, the second author of the article. Future space mission ArielFrom the European Space Agency (European Space Agency).
Ariel will be assigned a task to study The atmosphere of about a thousand exoplanets This is important Portuguese participation Led by IA, as well as one of this study's co-authors, Zeta Martins, A.S Community world From the European Space Agency.
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