Titan: Exploring planetary atmospheres and climate with infra-red spectroscopy

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Titan is Saturn's largest moon and is the only moon in our Solar System to have a substantial atmosphere - composed of nitrogen, methane, and a vast array of photochemically produced organic compounds. Titan has many similar atmospheric processes to the Earth, such as clouds, rain, global meridional circulation, and polar vortices. Titan thus provides the best example of an Earth-like planet in the cold outer Solar System and a unique test case for our understanding of atmospheric physics under different conditions.This project will study aspects of Titan's complex atmosphere based on infrared spectra, primarily observed by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Cassini has been returning data from the Saturn system since July 2004 and will complete its mission in 2017 by plummeting into Saturn. This will leave a 13 year dataset, which will give exceptional spatial and temporal coverage of Titan's atmosphere during almost half a Saturnian year (29.5 years long).The project will focus on data from Cassini's Composite InfraRed Spectrometer (CIRS), Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), and Imaging Science Sub-system (ISS). These instruments are sensitive to stratospheric composition/temperature, tropospheric composition/clouds, and hazes. Additional data from the Herschel space telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) could also be used, with the potential for James Webb Space Telescope data later in the project.