The Dragonfly mission to Titan will land at the Selk crater. Titan is tidally locked in synchronous rotation with Saturn and I'm trying to find out if Dragonfly will be on the Saturn-facing side of the Moon. I know that the landing site is at 7° North and 199° West but I haven't been able to discover the prime meridian with respect to Saturn.
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2Tidally locked moons have their 0° longitude defined as the 'sub-planet' point (In every instance I've seen) – BrendanLuke15 Dec 31 '21 at 14:36
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2@BrendanLuke15 I've quoted you here Just how locked is Titan? Does it exhibit libration due to eccentricity? Have residual oscillations not yet damped out been detected or ruled out? – uhoh Dec 31 '21 at 18:24
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1I came along to accept the answer that was posted here yesterday but it appears to have been deleted‽ – Dave Gremlin Jan 01 '22 at 11:52
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@BrendanLuke15 That seems logical, I wonder if it's standardised by the IAU? – Dave Gremlin Jan 01 '22 at 11:55
1 Answers
So, after a lot of googling (I hesitate to call it 'research'), I've found the following:
Wikipedia states that:
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and, like the Earth's moon, always has the same face towards Saturn, and so the middle of that face is 0 longitude.
but has no supporting references.
The IAU Working Group on Cartographic Coordinates and Rotational Elements (WGCCRE) has a responsibility to
define the rotational elements of the planets, satellites, asteroids, and comets of the solar system on a systematic basis and to relate their cartographic coordinates rigorously to the rotational elements.
I couldn't find the rules for coordinate systems on the IAU website, but NASA has a PDS standards reference document that, in chapter 2, references the WGCCRE and states:
If a body has a solid surface, prime meridians for a given longitude system may be defined by specifying the coordinates of a surface feature on the body (usually a small feature such as a crater in the equatorial region) or by the mean direction relative to the parent body for synchronously rotating bodies (e.g., the Moon, the Galilean moons, and most of the Saturnian moons). Where insufficient observations exist to determine the principal moment of inertia, coordinates of a surface feature will be specified and used to define the prime meridian.
(my emphasis)
So at 199° west the Selk crater is on the far side of the moon, as viewed from Saturn.
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