Saturn Titan's moon is a precious jewel in our solar system. Its greenish-blue hues are similar to Earth's, and it is the only other site in our region of the galaxy where we have evidence of churning oceans and magnificent clouds. However, Titan is unique; it's Earth, but in a parallel universe. Water isn't a component of its seemingly aquatic atmosphere, oceans, rivers, and lakes. They are composed of methane and ethane.
In a word, yes, it is crazy. You shouldn't risk being caught in a storm or taking a swim at the beach when the weather is hot and muggy. Its strange (and interesting) atmosphere has prompted much research on Saturn's biggest moon.
On November 5, scientists got their hands on some of the first photographs of Titan taken by NASA's cutting-edge James Webb Space Telescope. NASA's planetary scientist Conor Nixon wrote about the team's introduction to the new photos in a blog post published on Thursday. The team was informed of the discovery by Université Paris Cité researcher Sebastien Rodriguez. His initial impression was that it was "extraordinary."
Webb's main camera, the NIRCam, is sensitive to infrared light and was used to take these pictures. These two clouds, labeled in the figure above, were visible to Webb in the northern hemisphere. Predictions of clouds have been floating around for a while now due to past Titan observations.
NASA says that the study should be seen as preliminary until it has been looked at by other scientists. The Keck telescope in Hawaii, a land-based observatory, performed a follow-up study to better understand the possible motion and shape transformation of the clouds. Two days later, on November 6, that telescope was used to observe clouds. Right now, it's hard to tell whether these are the same clouds that have evolved or if these are whole new ones. It is anticipated that clouds on Titan will develop and vanish quickly.
We may expect further views from Webb in the future. With its MIRI sensor, we may expect to get the first data by mid-2023. This is especially promising since no previous observations of Titan have been made in the infrared wavelengths used by MIRI, which should provide new details about Titan's atmosphere.
