Planetary Atmospheres

Fig 1: Image of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan from Cassini’s ISS camera. Titan’s thick atmosphere is often used as an early-Earth analogue. A south polar cloud is visible near the image centre, coinciding with Titan’s polar vortex. [NASA/JPL] Fig 2: Example thermal infra-red spectrum of Titan from Cassini’s CIRS spectrometer, which measured over a terabyte of data during the mission (2004-2017). Observations of the gas emission peaks can be used to determine atmospheric composition and temperature. These results can be used to probe atmospheric chemistry and dynamics, providing insight into the workings of Titan’s atmosphere.