LAT: Mystery storm clouds on Saturn's largest moon appear

[Heidi]

Caltech researchers find the first evidence of a methane storm over Titan's equatorial zone, where dry channels were possibly carved by rain.

August 15, 2009

At last, the missing storm clouds on Saturn's moon Titan may have been found.

In the last decade, researchers have monitored clouds at both of Titan's poles, where large lakes of methane have been spotted by Earth-based observers and by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting the moon for the last three years. But the moon's clouds seemed inexplicably confined to those areas.

"We've seen a lot of clouds at the poles. But we'd never seen a major storm at the equator," said Michael Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech.

This result has had scientists scratching their heads. When the European probe Huygens parachuted to the surface of Saturn's large moon from NASA's Cassini spacecraft in January 2005, the probe's cameras showed what looked to geologists to be dry channels left by methane rivers cutting through dune fields in the equatorial zone.

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[Norrin Radd]

1. Titan must be really stinky.

[jgraz]

4. Methane is odorless

Io, with its sulfur dioxide volcanoes, is probably the stinkiest moon in the solar system.

[Norrin Radd]

5. Oh? Ah! Good to know. Thanks for the factoid.

Won't be taking my space faring age vacation to Io, then. Maybe I should check the encyclopedia before I crack a stupid joke -- or say anything -- more often, for that matter? To hell with spontaneity! Connect my brain directly to Britannica. ;-)

[jgraz]

6. Sorry. I hate to wreck a good fart joke.

But ultimately, the science nerd in me won out over my inner three-year-old. ;)

[ControlledDemolition]

2. A while back I came across an article saying that the polar regions of Mars were melting.

This combined with the asteroid strike on Jupiter a few weeks ago suggests our solar system is in an acitive phase at the moment. What this means, I'm not sure.

[TexasObserver]

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