Surprise hidden in Titan's smog: Cirrus-like clouds
Thursday, February 3, 2011 - 17:30
in Astronomy & Space
Every day is a bad-air day on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Blanketed by haze far worse than any smog belched out in Los Angeles, Beijing or even Sherlock Holmes's London, the moon looks like a dirty orange ball. Described once as crude oil without the sulfur, the haze is made of tiny droplets of hydrocarbons with other, more noxious chemicals mixed in. Gunk. Now thin, wispy clouds of ice particles, similar to Earth's cirrus clouds have also been discovered.