Starship Asterisk*

Avalon wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 9:22 pm
There appears to be a ghostly echo around Titan, especially visible at the poles. Is it an atmosphere of some sort? What am I seeing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan#Vertical_structure wrote:

Titan's atmosphere backlit by the Sun, with Saturn's rings behind. An outer haze layer merges at top with the northern polar hood.

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<<Titan's vertical atmospheric structure is similar to Earth. They both have a troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere. However, Titan's lower surface gravity creates a more extended atmosphere, with scale heights of 15–50 km in comparison to 5–8 km on Earth. Voyager data, combined with data from Huygens and radiative-convective models provide increased understanding of Titan's atmospheric structure.

Troposphere: This is the layer where a lot of the weather occurs on Titan. Since methane condenses out of Titan's atmosphere at high altitudes, its abundance increases below the tropopause at an altitude of 32 km, leveling off at a value of 4.9% between 8 km and the surface. Methane rain, haze rainout, and varying cloud layers are found in the troposphere.

Stratosphere: The atmospheric composition in the stratosphere is 98.4% nitrogen—the only dense, nitrogen-rich atmosphere in the Solar System aside from Earth's—with the remaining 1.6% composed mostly of methane (1.4%) and hydrogen (0.1–0.2%). The main tholin haze layer lies in the stratosphere at about 100–210 km. In this layer of the atmosphere there is a strong temperature inversion caused by the haze due to a high ratio of shortwave to infrared opacity.

Mesosphere: A detached haze layer is found at about 450–500 km, within the mesosphere. The temperature at this layer is similar to that of the thermosphere because of the cooling of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) lines.

Thermosphere: Particle production begins in the thermosphere. This was concluded after finding and measuring heavy ions and particles. This was also Cassini's closest approach in Titan's atmosphere.

Ionosphere: Titan's ionosphere is also more complex than Earth's, with the main ionosphere at an altitude of 1,200 km but with an additional layer of charged particles at 63 km. This splits Titan's atmosphere to some extent into two separate radio-resonating chambers. The source of natural extremely-low-frequency (ELF) waves on Titan, as detected by Cassini–Huygens, is unclear as there does not appear to be extensive lightning activity.>>

nam888id wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:27 am The picture reminds me of some artist's concept of space travel on Star Trek.

Confused wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 4:24 pm I see a small bump in front of Titan to the right of its left side and in the ring. Is that something?

Victoria wrote: ↑Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:12 am Kindly help me spot Pandora