Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• MacKenzie, Shannon M.
• Barnes, Jason W.
• Sotin, Christophe
• Soderblom, Jason M.
• Le Mouélic, Stéphane
• Rodriguez, Sebastien
• Baines, Kevin H.
• Buratti, Bonnie J.
• Clark, Roger N.
• Nicholson, Phillip D.
• McCord, Thomas B.

Titel

Evidence of Titan’s climate history from evaporite distribution

Ist Teil von

• Icarus (New York, N.Y. 1962), 2014-11, Vol.243, p.191-207

Ort / Verlag

Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• •Evaporite candidates identified across surface of Titan.•Candidates not exclusive to the poles.•Few candidates identified at the south pole compared to the north. Water–ice-poor, 5-μm-bright material on Saturn’s moon Titan has previously been geomorphologically identified as evaporitic. Here we present a global distribution of the occurrences of the 5-μm-bright spectral unit, identified with Cassini’s Visual Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) and examined with RADAR when possible. We explore the possibility that each of these occurrences are evaporite deposits. The 5-μm-bright material covers 1% of Titan’s surface and is not limited to the poles (the only regions with extensive, long-lived surface liquid). We find the greatest areal concentration to be in the equatorial basins Tui Regio and Hotei Regio. Our interpretations, based on the correlation between 5-μm-bright material and lakebeds, imply that there was enough liquid present at some time to create the observed 5-μm-bright material. We address the climate implications surrounding a lack of evaporitic material at the south polar basins: if the south pole basins were filled at some point in the past, then where is the evaporite?