EarthSky | Saturn’s moon Titan occults star in new images

Titan occults a star

On November 29, 2022, Titan, Saturn’s massive moon, handed in entrance of a distant background star in an occasion known as an occultation by astronomers. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope captured the occasion in pictures you’ll be able to see on this web page.

Titan is the one moon in our solar system with a dense ambiance. And the astronomers stated this occultation provided them a novel likelihood to review this distant moon, which is understood to have clouds, rain, rivers, lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons (like methane and ethane).

The Very Giant Telescopes, or VLT – utilizing its SPHERE adaptive optics was capable of picture Titan regardless of its distance of greater than 700 million miles (1.1 billion km) from Earth. Astronomers have been capable of obtain a .04 arcsecond decision of Titan and the passing star (resolution, to astronomers, is a sign of how clearly we see an object).

From Earth, Titan seems about .8 arcseconds huge. That’s tiny, contemplating that one diploma of sky is the same as your pinky finger held at arm’s size. And it takes 60 arcminutes to make up one diploma, and 60 arcseconds to make up one arcminute.

Within the VLT picture, the rings across the star are diffraction artifacts, and the white and black dots are dangerous pixels.

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The development of the occultation

Connor A. Nixon, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard who researches planetary atmospheres and astrobiology (life within the universe), was a kind of finding out the occultation. Listed here are Nixon’s play-by-play pictures of the occultation, by way of Twitter.

Backside line: Titan occulted (handed in entrance of) a distant background star on November 29, 2022. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Giant Telescope captured superb pictures of the occasion.