Artist's Depiction of Huygens Probe Landing on Titan
INTRODUCTION
At the NASA Astrobiology Science Conference in the spring of 2004, in preparation for
the scheduled analysis of Titan's atmospheric and surface chemistry by the
Huygens probe,
the
NAI Titan Focus Group decided to set up this web site of all published studies
relevant to the chemistry occurring on Titan. For more than 20 years, scientists have
been carrying out laboratory or computational simulations of Titan in order to unravel
the dynamic chemistry that appeared to taking pace in Titan's atmosphere as evidenced by
the presence of a substantial organic haze. Many labs have isolated and characterized
the gaseous and solid products, the latter often referred to as tholins, derived from
the action of electrical discharge or UV photons on mixtures of primarily nitrogen with
lesser amounts of methane or other hydrocarbons. Different energy sources, gas
compositions and pressures, and product analysis methods have been used. The tables
following are an attempt to summarize and compare data from different labs.
Table 3, Figure 1 and a bibliography of over 500 publications relevant to Titan atmospheric
chemistry can be downloaded as a zip file,
TitanArchive.zip.
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