Scientists have discovered that large patches of gases are making Saturn's moon, Titan, glow at dusk and dawn.

The patches consist of two trace gases that are strangely shifted off the poles, moving along Titan's dawn-dusk line.

As of yet, scientists can't clearly explain the phenomenon because it defies conventional thinking about Titan's windy atmosphere, which should likely blow off such concentrations.

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"These kinds of east-to-west variations have never been seen before in Titan's atmospheric gases. Explaining their origin presents us with a fascinating new problem," said astrochemist Martin Cordiner from NASA.

The discovery came from observations conducted by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a network of radio telescopes in the desert of northern Chile. Scientists acquired spatial maps of chemicals present in Titan's atmosphere from a three-minute snapshot observation.

The strange moon's atmosphere has garnered wide interest among scientists since it acts as a chemical factory that uses energy from the sun and Saturn's magnetic field to produce massive organic molecules.

Scientists used ALMA to track the atmospheric distributions of the two organic molecules, hydrogen isocyanide (HNC) and cyanoacetylene (HC3N).

At lower altitude, the molecules appeared concentrated above the north and south poles of Titan. But at the highest altitude, the large patches of the gases appeared to be shifted away from the poles.

The abundant concentrations located off the poles were unexpected because the ferocious winds in the middle of Titan's atmosphere move from east to west, forming zones where the atmospheric gases should be thoroughly mixed, not distinct.

Scientists are currently considering potential explanations for the findings, including thermal effects and the influence of Saturn's magnetic field.

Further observations are expected to clearly understand the phenomenon that might not only help explain the mystery behind the composition of Titan's atmosphere but could also shed light on the Earth's early atmosphere, which was thought to resemble Titan's.

The findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.  

TagsNASA, TItan, Saturn, Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)