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A Thermal Inertia Map of Titan

MacKenzie, Shannon M.; Lorenz, Ralph D.; Lora, Juan M.

Like Earth, the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is affected by the ability of the surface to store and release heat. Modeling efforts have shown that global temperature distributions and wind profiles differ between simulations describing Titan's surface with a uniform thermal inertia. Cassini-Huygens demonstrated, however, that a vari…

Cassini UVIS Detection of Saturn's North Polar Hexagon in the Grand Finale Orbits

Lamy, L.; West, R. A.; Esposito, L. W. +6 more

Cassini's final orbits in 2016 and 2017 provided unprecedented spatial resolution of Saturn's polar regions from near-polar spacecraft viewing geometries. Long-wavelength channels of Cassini's Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph instrument detected Saturn's UV-dark north polar hexagon near 180 nm at planetocentric latitudes near 75°N. The dark polar …