Journal
ICARUS
Volume 185, Issue 1, Pages 301-307Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2006.06.004
Keywords
titan; organic chemistry; satellites, surfaces
Categories
Funding
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/D504872/1] Funding Source: researchfish
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Titan's tholins are used as analogs of Titan's aerosols and N-rich organic solids present on many icy surfaces. However, it is not clear whether or not they are relevant analogs, and which kind of tholins should be used among a wide set available in literature. This paper presents reflectance spectral data of two tholins selected as end-members of a series of samples covering a very wide range of continuous chemical and optical properties. These samples were formed under experimental conditions fairly consistent with Titan's stratosphere. A general framework for using these laboratory data to the analysis of spectral observation of Titan's surface or other objects is suggested. Furthermore, the study reports the first in situ unambiguous identification of aromatics compounds and evidences variations in the sp(2) carbon structure, which controls the absorption properties in the visible/NIR. These results also point out it is very unlikely to derive quantitative chemical information (e.g., N content, sp(2)/sp(3) ratio) from remote sensing reflectance data. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available