Scientists have had a hunch that a distant moon experiences weather like Earth’s, forming clouds that douse its craggy surface with rain.
If that’s the case, it would make Titan the only other world in the solar system that has that in common with our home planet. Now researchers have one more clue that Titan, the largest of 274 known Saturn moons, has a climate cycle similar to what occurs on Earth.
The catch: Instead of evaporating and filling Titan’s lakes and oceans with water, it’s likely showering the moon with cold, oily methane.
Using two powerful telescopes — the James Webb Space Telescope and the Keck II telescope in Hawaii — astronomers watched clouds emerge and then climb higher in the sky over Titan, which is about 880 million miles away in space. For the first time, they saw clouds hovering in the north, where most of the moon’s lakes and seas exist, at the tail end of its summer.
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