惠更斯拍攝的土衛六表面
The Surface of Titan from Huygens
發表日期：2025-11-30
如果你能站在土衛六上，你會看到什麼？來自土衛六的彩色特寫凝視著土星最大衛星上陌生而遙遠的風景。 2005 年，歐空局的惠更斯號探測器經過 2 . 5 小時的下降，穿過了夾雜著甲烷的濃厚氮氣層，記錄下了這一景象。 在地面上，散落的岩石沐浴在陰森的橙色燈光下，這些岩石很可能是由水和碳氫化合物組成的，在負 179 攝氏度的惡劣溫度下被凍結成固體。 據信，碟形飛船深入土衛六表面約 15 釐米的地方，那裡的稠度相當於溼沙或粘土。 惠更斯號的電池使探測器能夠在著陸後 90 多分鐘內拍攝和傳輸資料。 土衛六奇異的化學環境可能與地球上生命進化前的環境相似。
原文：If you could stand on Titan -- what would you see? The featured color view from Titan gazes across an unfamiliar and distant landscape on Saturn's largest moon. The scene was recorded by ESA's Huygens probe in 2005 after a 2.5-hour descent through a thick atmosphere of nitrogen laced with methane. Bathed in an eerie orange light at ground level, rocks strewn about the scene could well be composed of water and hydrocarbons frozen solid at an inhospitable temperature of negative 179 degrees C. The large light-toned rock below and left of center is only about 15 centimeters across and lies 85 centimeters away. The saucer-shaped spacecraft is believed to have penetrated about 15 centimeters into a place on Titan's surface that had the consistency of wet sand or clay. Huygen's batteries enabled the probe to take and transmit data for more than 90 minutes after landing. Titan's bizarre chemical environment may bear similarities to planet Earth's before life evolved.
※ 本文由萌芽機器人自動轉貼自每日一天文圖（Astronomy Picture of the Day，APOD），原文為英文，正體中文是透過 DeepL 翻譯及 OpenCC 進行自動處理，內容僅供參考，若有任何錯誤之處還請見諒！
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