Titan's Nitrogen Budget

Details Titan's Nitrogen Budget Titan's Nitrogen Budget

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.2709w&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #27.09; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.528

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The destruction of nitrogen through photolysis and electron impact processes in Titan's upper atmosphere and through cosmic ray ionization in Titan's stratosphere results in the formation of nitrile molecules, which are transported into the stratosphere, and nitrogen-based ions, which populate Titan's upper and lower ionosphere. These compounds contribute to the possible formation of ion clusters and to the eventual incorporation of nitrogen into Titan haze, which has been investigated by laboratory studies and confirmed by observations from the Huygens Aerosol Collector Pyrolyser (ACP) instrument [1]. However, the mechanisms by which these processes occur are still largely unknown. One of the barriers to our understanding is the fact that a significant portion of Titan's nitrogen budget goes into compounds for which there has been little study at low temperatures, compounds like methanimine (CH2NH) and the carbene imine ion (C3NH+). These imines, which exhibit the N-H functional group, may play a significant role in the nitrogen incorporation into haze as shown by the detection of the N-H functional group in the sample analyzed by the ACP instrument [1] and by laboratory studies. This poster will detail the current state of knowledge of Titan's nitrogen budget, as elucidated by the recent observations of the Cassini-Huygens mission, and this study will explore the potential role of these understudied compounds in the production of haze and possible formation of amino acids on or near the surface, the study of which having potential implications on future in-situ investigations of Titan.
This research is supported by a grant from the NASA Outer Planets Program.
[1] Israel, G., et al., Nature, 438, 796-799, 2005.

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