Cassini Station photographed summer clouds on Titan

Animated images of moving clouds - under habrakat (3MB and more)

Recently, several images of clouds on Titan appeared on the Web. These images were taken by Cassini station, during the flight over the hydrocarbon seas of Titan, the satellite of Saturn, in the northern hemisphere. These clouds may be the beginning of "summer" storms, which astronomers predicted for quite some time.

It is worth noting that the images were taken back in July, but only now NASA posted them on the Web, after a detailed study. After analysis, it turned out that the wind speed on Titan, in the study region, is 3-4.5 m / s).
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Back in 2004, when Cassini Station was just beginning to study Saturn and Titan, scientists found that there were quite a few clouds at Titan’s North Pole. It was a local "late summer." Clouds were observed until spring, all in the same northern hemisphere. After that, in 2010, a strong storm was detected on the satellite of Saturn, and the clouds became much less, they almost disappeared.



On the basis of the data obtained, a model of the atmosphere of Titan was created, according to which clouds appear here in summer, with a simultaneous increase in temperature in the region.

It is worth noting that the year on Titan lasts 30 Earth years, so the duration of each season on the satellite of Saturn is 7 Earth years. Now examining Titan's seasonal changes is one of Cassini’s primary concerns. In the course of the current work, we managed to get quite high-quality images of clouds on Titan.

Here is another , especially “heavy” animated gif, which is better not to post in the post.

Via nasa