Imagery gathered by Cassini reveals mysterious bright spots on Titan, thought to be dust storms.
This animation, released by NASA, is based on images captured by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer on the Cassini mission during several flybys of Saturn’s moon Titan in 2009 and 2010.
The results show clear bright spots appearing close to the equator around the equinox that have been interpreted as evidence of dust storms. The brightenings were visible only for a short period of time – between 11 hours and five Earth weeks. They have not been seen in previous or subsequent images.
Originally published by Cosmos as Dust storms on Titan
Kelly Wong
Kelly Wong is the social media manager at The Royal Institution of Australia. She has a Bachelor of Biomedical Science, Allergy and Immunology, Hons Class I.
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