Abstract
Titan, Triton and Pluto form a triad of similar icy bodies in the outer solar system. Each has a diameter around 2500–3500 km across with an interior dominated by ice and rock. Each plays host to an atmosphere dominated by nitrogen. Here, however, the similarity ends. The atmospheres of Triton and Pluto are tenuous affairs, a thin veil of gases that loosely cling to the surface of each world, while Titan hosts an atmosphere thicker than the Earth’s. Titan’s atmosphere has been rich enough to bequeath the diminutive world with a rich “hydrological cycle” based on liquid methane and ethane. Consequently, Titan displays many of the complex eroded landforms found on Earth.
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Notes
- 1.
Getting a precise figure here has proved very frustrating with numbers varying from 0.4 kg per second (34 metric tons per day), —to as much as 300 metric tons per day. My calculations, based on a different published unit (amu), were closer to, but a lot higher than, the UCL figure… I went with the UCL figure, for the described mechanism, in the end and remain vague on the total loss. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/mathematical-physical-sciences/maps-news-publication/maps1535
- 2.
At the time of going to press, it is thought that this methane layer is only a thin covering over what is mostly convecting nitrogen ice.
- 3.
At the time of going to press this has been confirmed and convection within a layer 3 km thick generates the observed pattern in Sputnik Planum.
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Stevenson, D.S. (2016). Ice Dwarves: Titan, Triton and Pluto. In: The Exo-Weather Report. Astronomers' Universe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25679-5_9
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