The study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, states that the smog on Titan begins to form when solar radiation excites nitrogen and methane molecules in the ionosphere, creating a “soup” of negative and positive ions. Collisions among these molecules allows them to grow into more complex aerosols, which coagulate when they reach a lower part of the atmosphere. Eventually the molecules produce the hydrocarbon rain that famously creates the lakes seen on Titan’s surface.

The researchers, based at the University of Reims, looked at data from three different Cassini instruments during the study. Data from Cassini’s plasma spectrometer, its ion and neutral mass spectrometer, and its radio and plasma wave science experiment were examined and compared to data from the Huygens probe, which descended to the surface of Titan in 2005.

Titan is the only other object in the soar system known to have stable liquid on its surface. In December of 2012 the ESA released a high-definition photo of a river valley that runs for over 400 km (248 miles) on the surface of Titan. The picture above shows a flash of sunlight that is reflected off a lake on Titan. The phenomenon is known as a specular reflection.

“Most of the Saturnian satellites – Titan’s siblings – have thousands and thousands of craters on their surface,” said Catherine Neish, a Cassini radar team associate based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “So far on Titan, of the 50 percent of the surface that we’ve seen in high resolution, we’ve only found about 60 craters. It’s possible that there are many more craters on Titan, but they are not visible from space because they are so eroded. We typically estimate the age of a planet’s surface by counting the number of craters on it (more craters means an older surface). But if processes like stream erosion or drifting sand dunes are filling them in, it’s possible that the surface is much older that it appears.”

The new research is the first quantitative estimate of how much the weather on Titan has eroded its surface. The moon is the only one known in our solar system to have a thick atmosphere. It is also known to have seas of organic compounds, such as ethane and methane, on its surface.

Methane is broken down in Titan’s atmosphere by sunlight, then recombined into more complex hydrocarbons. These molecules form an orange smog that envelops the planet. Some of the larger particles from the atmosphere, say scientists, rain down and become bound together into an exotic form of sand.

“Since the sand appears to be produced from the atmospheric methane, Titan must have had methane in its atmosphere for at least several hundred million years in order to fill craters to the levels we are seeing,” said Neish.

Titan’s methane levels are somewhat of a mystery, however. Researchers estimate that current levels of methane on Titan would be broken down within tens of millions of years. This suggests that the moon either had much more methane in the past, or is replenishing its methane in some way.

(Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/GSFC)

“One of the most intriguing questions about these lakes and seas is whether they might host an exotic form of life,” said Jonathan Lunine, co-author of the research and a Cassini interdisciplinary Titan scientist at Cornell University. “And the formation of floating hydrocarbon ice will provide an opportunity for interesting chemistry along the boundary between liquid and solid, a boundary that may have been important in the origin of terrestrial life.”

Floating methane ice was thought to be impossible on Titan, since solid methane is more dense than liquid methane, and would sink. The new research considers the interplay between Titan’s lakes and the moon’s atmosphere. Scientists found that the types of methane and ethane ice that might exist on Titan will float if the temperature is below 90.4 kelvins (297 degrees Fahrenheit), methane’s freezing point.

“We now know it’s possible to get methane-and-ethane-rich ice freezing over on Titan in thin blocks that congeal together as it gets colder — similar to what we see with Arctic sea ice at the onset of winter,” said Jason Hofgartner, lead author of the paper and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada scholar at Cornell. “We’ll want to take these conditions into consideration if we ever decide to explore the Titan surface some day.”

Titan is the only other object in our solar system besides Earth known to have bodies of liquid on its surface. Its seas are composed of organic molecules that are believed to have been the building blocks for life on Earth.

“Though there are some short, local meanders, the relative straightness of the river valley suggests it follows the trace of at least one fault, similar to other large rivers running into the southern margin of this same Titan sea,” said Jani Radebaugh, a Cassini radar team associate at Brigham Young University. “Such faults – fractures in Titan’s bedrock – may not imply plate tectonics, like on Earth, but still lead to the opening of basins and perhaps to the formation of the giant seas themselves.”

Researchers explained that they believe the river is filled with liquid because it is dark along its entire extent in the image. This indicates a smooth surface, and Titan is the only other object in the solar system known to have stable liquid on its surface. The liquid likely isn’t water, though. Titan’s environment contains liquid hydrocarbons, such as ethane and methane.

“This radar-imaged river by Cassini provides another fantastic snapshot of a world in motion, which was first hinted at from the images of channels and gullies seen by ESA’s Huygens probe as it descended to the moon’s surface in 2005,” said Nicolas Altobelli, ESA’s Cassini Project Scientist.

The Cassini probe recently celebrated its 15th birthday since launch. In its time around Saturn, the probe has found lakes on Titan, signs of water ice on Enceladus, and followed huge storms in Saturn’s atmosphere.

(Image courtesy NASA/JPL–Caltech/ASI)

“Cassini’s up-close observations are likely the only ones we’ll have in our lifetime of a transition like this in action,” said Nick Teanby, the study’s lead author and a Cassini team associated at the University of Bristol. “It’s extremely exciting to see such rapid changes on a body that usually changes so slowly and has a ‘year’ that is the equivalent of nearly 30 Earth years.”

Titan is interesting to researchers because is is one of only a few objects in our solar system, along with Earth, Venus, and Mars, that has both a solid surface and substantial atmosphere. Models of Titan’s atmosphere have predicted atmosphere circulation changes for almost 20 years, but the Titan pole that is currently undergoing winter is normally pointed away from Earth. Cassini is finally observing the circulation changes directly.

“Understanding Titan’s atmosphere gives us clues for understanding our own complex atmosphere,” said Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Some of the complexity in both places arises from the interplay of atmospheric circulation and chemistry.”

NASA also stated that Cassini has detected complex chemical production in Titan’s atmosphere at up to 600 kilometers (400 miles) above the moon’s surface. This means that atmospheric circulation extends to about 100 kilometers (60 miles) higher than scientists expected. The compression of that air as it sank lower created a “hot spot” high above Titan’s south pole. That suggested that changes would be coming to the moon’s atmosphere, and that a layer of haze first detected by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft may not be as “detached” as was previously thought. The haze, instead, may be where small haze particles combine into larger aggregates that drop in Titan’s atmosphere and give the moon it’s orange color.

“Next, we would expect to see the vortex over the south pole build up,” said Mike Flasar, Cassini’s composite infrared spectrometer principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “As that happens, one question is whether the south winter pole will be the identical twin of the north winter pole, or will it have a distinct personality? The most important thing is to be able to keep watching as these changes happen.”

(Image courtesy ESA)

One month ago, the Cassini probe celebrated its 15th birthday since the probe was launched back in 1997. In celebration of its progress, NASA this weekend released an interactive timeline which highlights many of the amazing discoveries that have come from Cassini’s measurements. Some of the highlights include the probe’s first flyby of Titan, the discovery of lakes on Titan, signs of water ice on Enceladus, and the launch of the Huygens probe to the surface of Titan.

After its launch, Cassini took the scenic route to Saturn. After two flybys of Venus, the probe whipped past Earth on the way to Jupiter. It spent the first six months of 2001 collaborating with the Galileo probe in studying Jupiter and its moons. In the summer of 2004 Cassini finally made it to Saturn. After launching Huygens and studying Saturn’s moons, the probe’s primary mission ended in 2008 and its new mission began. That mission was completed in 2010, and Cassini’s third and final mission began. Beginning in 2016, the probe will orbit closer and closer to Saturn, and on September 15, 2017 Cassini will enter Saturn’s atmosphere. According to NASA, the probe will be “crushed and vaporized by the pressure and temperature of Saturn’s final embrace…”

“It turns out that Titan glows in the dark – though very dimly,” said Robert West, lead author of a recent study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and a Cassini imaging team scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It’s a little like a neon sign, where electrons generated by electrical power bang into neon atoms and cause them to glow. Here we’re looking at light emitted when charged particles bang into nitrogen molecules in Titan’s atmosphere.”

Scientists had already studies the phenomenon, known as an airglow, which is caused when atoms and molecules are excited by ultraviolet sunlight or electrically charged particles. In Titan’s case, the airglow is from Titan’s nitrogen molecules, which were excited by X-rays and ultraviolet radiation from the sun. What has surprised scientists is the glow coming from deeper in Titan’s atmosphere.

“This is exciting because we’ve never seen this at Titan before,” said West. “It tells us that we don’t know all there is to know about Titan and makes it even more mysterious.”

The current guess as to the deep-atmosphere glow is that it’s being caused by deeper-penetrating cosmic rays or by light emitted by a chemical reaction deep in the atmosphere.

Scientists are interested in the glow because they are studying the chemical reactions that form the heavy molecules that make up Titan’s haze of organic chemicals. “This kind of work helps us understand what kind of organic chemistry could have existed on an early Earth,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist.

(Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)

Now, a new discovery on Titan has the scientific world buzzing: at least one huge lake, different from the hundreds of pools of water grouped around its poles by a very interesting factor. This lake, which is half as big as Utah’s Great Salt Lake and stands at about three feet deep, is located near the equator, which has earned it a “tropical” title.

To be clear, there is no “tropical” weather on Saturn. It’s an extremely frigid planet, hosting temperatures of around -297 degrees Fahrenheit. The lakes on its surface are actually formed with methane gases and other liquid hydrocarbons rather than water. Those studying the moon have given the newly found lake a descriptor that we associate with warm, sandy locales because of its proximity to the equator.

The interesting thing about this find is that it was previously believed that liquid methane was formed near the equatorial region on Titan and then carried on the breeze to the north and south poles of the moon, where cooler temperatures condensed it, transforming it into small bodies of liquid. Basically, if you remember anything about sixth-grade science, it’s pretty much the same thing that happens on Earth with water. But now–with the aid of NASA’s Cassini orbiter–scientists have reason to believe the methane is being supplied near the equator by an underground aquifer.

“We had thought that Titan simply had extensive dunes at the equator and lakes at the poles, but now we know that Titan is more complex than we previously thought,” said Linda Spilker, the Cassini project scientist for NASA. “Cassini still has multiple opportunities to fly by this moon going forward, so we can’t wait to see how the details of this story fill out.”

HTC announced at CES their first Windows-based phone to run on a 4G LTE network and it is a beauty. The kicker, however, is that it comes with a 16-megapixel camera. That’s truly ridiculous for a phone’s camera and makes the HTC Titan II easily one of the most compelling phones on the market for the camera alone.

“HTC’s history of innovation in 4G technology includes delivering the first 4G-powered devices to each major carrier in the U.S., so it is exciting today to continue that leadership with our first 4G LTE Windows Phone, the HTC TITAN II,” Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corp., said. “This full-featured smartphone combines HTC’s design with AT&T’s high-speed 4G LTE network and Microsoft’s powerful Windows Phone software, giving people more of what they crave.”

The phone is equipped with a 4.7-inch super LCD capacitive touchscreen that looks to provide a great viewing experience for movies, games and more. Of course, with it being a Windows Phone, it will also offer Xbox LIVE which has always been the most compelling part about the Windows phone software.

The phone also features 720p HD video recording with the rear facing camera and video chat over Wi-Fi with its 1.3 mega-pixel front-facing camera.

Now about that amazing 16-megapixel camera, it’s almost as if HTC and Microsoft want to replace digital point-and-shoot cameras. It features a wide-angle lens, autofocus, dual LED flash, red eye reduction, image stabilization, a backside-illuminated sensor and a physical camera button. It seems like HTC made a camera and decided to throw a smartphone on top of it.

The phone’s hardware will feature a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S2 processor and a decent battery that will provide plenty of longevity before a recharge is required.

The Windows phone software is also looking pretty good and could be a serious contender for iOS and Android devices. With this new amazing camera that happens to be a smartphone, Windows phones could be a market disruptor. If Windows phones can keep getting hardware this good, I don’t see why not.

The HTC Titan II will launch exclusively with AT&T in the coming months.

The promotion is called "Step Up to the Mic," and is designed to let MySpace users in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, share their thoughts with the public in these cities. The two companies are also encouraging celebrities and music artists to take part to promote their "passion projects" and communicate with fans.

"The convergence of social media and digital out-of-home advertising is actually happening as a result of Titan’s partnership with MySpace." said Bill Apfelbaum, Chairman of Titan. "The ability to create and connect communities through Titan’s digital signs located around the world and the ability for advertisers to interact with and connect with their target audiences on a real-time basis now exists. We are delighted to work with the social media trailblazers, MySpace, in revolutionizing our industry."

"MySpace has continuously provided our users with online and offline capabilities on a global level," said Angela Courtin, SVP of Marketing Entertainment and Content at MySpace. "The project with Titan reaffirms that offering by marrying the world of advertising with socialization and sharing. It enables our users to broadcast themselves in a creative and innovative manner, just as they do on the site."

The promotion certainly provides for an interesting spin on social media marketing. Users can go to the promotion’s MySpace page to participate. There is a 50-character and one image limit.