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How did astronomers first detect methane in Titan’s atmosphere?

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Titan Titan, moon of Saturn, photographed by Voyager 2 on August 25, 1981, at a distance of 907,000 km (564,000 miles). Green and violet images were combined to make this photograph, which shows the extended atmosphere of the satellite.

Astronomers first detected methane in Titan’s atmosphere in 1944 through spectroscopic analysis. The Dutch American astronomer Gerard P. Kuiper identified the presence of the gas by observing the absorption of sunlight within the moon's atmosphere.1