Spring on Titan brings sunshine and patchy clouds
Friday, October 1, 2010 - 00:14
in Astronomy & Space
The northern hemisphere of Saturn's moon Titan is set for mainly fine spring weather, with polar skies clearing since the equinox in August last year. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been monitoring clouds on Titan regularly since the spacecraft entered orbit around Saturn in 2004. Now, researchers have analyzed more than 2,000 VIMS images to create the first long-term study of Titan's weather using observational data that also includes the equinox.