Scientists Puzzled by Mysterious Motion in Atmosphere of Saturn's Moon

Researchers have found that the thick and hazy atmosphere enveloping Saturn's largest moon, Titan, behaves in a very peculiar way. As detailed in a new paper published in The Planetary Science Journal, a team of scientists analyzed 13 years' worth of thermal infrared observations recorded by NASA and the European Space Agency's Cassini-Huygens mission. Their finding: that Titan's atmosphere wobbles like a gyroscope as it shifts with the seasons of its nearly 30 Earth-year cycle, instead of spinning in line with its surface. "The behavior of Titan's atmospheric tilt is very strange," said lead author and University of Bristol postdoctoral researcher Lucy Wright in a statement about the work. "Titan's atmosphere appears to be acting like a gyroscope, stabilizing itself in space." The discovery makes the moon, which has already captured the attention of astronomers for its suspected bodies of liquid and planet-like dimensions — it's larger in diameter than Mercury — an even more intri ... Read full article.