I can see Earth's curve from here! --and the dark seas of Titan

[asakiyume]

There were two space-related news stories I loved this week. One was the story of the M.I.T. students who sent a point-and-click digital camera into space and got photos of the curvature of the earth, for total cost of just under $150 dollars, and the other was the story of the proposal to explore the oceanic surface of Titan by ship. Not sailing ship, of course (though who doesn't have that image at first?), seeing as the temperature on Titan is almost three hundred degrees below zero Fahrenheit, but some kind of Major-Tom-esque tin can, floating on it.

The liquid on Titan is methane, not water, but the news story talked about how liquid methane behaves like water, raining down from the sky, forming rivers, filling up the seas.

Titan's much farther away from the sun than Earth is, so it must be rather dark there, though. If you could get out of the capsule (if you could stand on the deck of the weatherized sailing ship), would the light from the distant sun be enough to let you see the waves? Would they shine by the light of the stars, or by Saturn?

Comments

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

You should write a poem about the methane seas on Titan, shining blue by starlight. :)

"farmer in the sky"

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

Farmer in the sky by robert a heinlein
is set on ganymede which is not as far
out as titan but far enough out to be
different than around here.

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

Oooh, so cool.

[desert-sparrow.livejournal.com]

The M.I.T. experiment is cool. According to formulas I found on the Web, with or without correcting for atmospheric refraction, the estimated distance from the camera to the horizon at 93000 feet ranges from 370 to 411 miles. In a jet at 36000 feet, the horizon is approximately 255 miles away.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

Major awesome! Did you click through to MIT students website where they have a time lapse video of the entire trip?

I'm going to link this too. Thanks!

Seeing by the light - with calculations

[ri-whittlesey.livejournal.com]

Titan's much farther away from the sun than Earth is. If you could stand on the deck of the weatherized sailing ship, would the light from the distant sun be enough to let you see the waves? Would they shine by the light of the stars, or by Saturn?

Do calculations spoil poetry? Saturn's about 10 times as far from the sun as Earth is; so light is dimmer by two orders of magnitude, or 6.6 stops. But our eyes' dynamic range is six orders of magnitude, or 20 stops. We should see handily on Titan, even if clouds cost another four stops or so (would that be about right?). And surely Saturn-light would help.

Why not sail? It would be wonderful to explore that sea. You'd need lightweight hull and rigging; methane's about 40% as dense as water. I wonder what waves in methane would look like?
...............................
Using Wikipedia articles "Saturn", "Human eye", "Methane"