Look At a Glance What Webb Telescope Finds Out From The Haze of Saturn’s Moon Titan
Titan is the only moon in the solar outline that keeps a dense atmosphere. That’s the only body in the solar system other than Earth to currently have liquid, seas, lakes, and rivers.
They’re not made of water though on Titan but rather Hydrocarbons like methane and ethane. Its atmosphere is also thick and hazy. The visible light that something like Hubble would see is offered obscured by the haze. For the infrared light that Webb sees.
What Webb Telescope has captured yet?
The Webb telescope captured two images of Titan. They were both taken in near-infrared light by the nircam instrument on board Webb. To let in slightly different wavelengths, in each of the pictures they use different filters.
You can see clouds on the moon that are about a billion miles from us. The Webb telescope’s recent pictures also contain some interesting surface features. These include Kraken Mare, thought to be a huge sea of methane. Bellet is a ripple of dark-colored dunes and Adiri is particularly bright with a reflective area. That seems to be a region of High Ground Riddled with drainage channels.
Are There Any Expectations of Having a Life on a Different Planet?
Webb’s analysis is ongoing. These hazy pictures can give you access to many wavelengths. That ground-based telescope like Keck can’t see. Along with future observations planned from nircam and the mid-infrared instrument Miri in May or June 2023.
This will teach us even more about the composition of the atmosphere and the surface in never before seen detail. That even exceeds the quality of data. Got from the Cassini spacecraft which went to Saturn. That may well give us the next chapter of the story of whether some form of life is possible on that giant moon.