The Double Haze above Titan
Most moons have no haze layer at all - why does Titan have two?
Images from the
Cassini spacecraft that
slipped into orbit around
Saturn
last month confirm that the Solar System's
most mysterious moon is surrounded not only by a thick atmosphere but also by
two distinct spheres of haze.
These layers are
visible
as purple in the above false-color ultraviolet image.
Titan's opaque atmosphere is similar to
Earth's atmosphere in that it is composed mostly of
nitrogen.
As energetic sunlight strikes high level atmospheric nitrogen and
methane, trace amounts of
organic compounds such as
ethane and
carbon dioxide appear to form.
These and other complex organic molecules likely populate the
detached haze layer.
In December 2004, Cassini will
launch the Huygens probe to land on
Titan.