At the north pole, a mysterious haze crowns the planet. Keck's adaptive optics images of Neptune are helping scientists study the planet's storms and their evolution, a first step toward understanding Neptune's weather and climate. It's always changing. Being able to study it from the ground on a continuous basis, rather than waiting for a spacecraft to fly by, is a huge advantage. The Titan images will offer clues about the complex surface composition of the Saturnian moon, a frigid world some 800 million miles from the sun.
Titan has a nitrogen-rich atmosphere similar to that of the early Earth.
Sunlight shining on this atmosphere produces a deep orange haze that obscures Titan's surface from view at visible wavelengths. Keck's new adaptive optics images, taken in infrared light, offer much greater sensitivity than past observing techniques. Other features might be highlands, and one dark area appears to be a large impact crater or great basin. In 2004 the Cassini spacecraft, built by NASA and the European Space Agency, is scheduled to land the Huygens probe on Titan. Keck's new images will help researchers determine beforehand whether the probe will plunge into an extra-terrestrial sea or land on a solid surface.