Latest Lakes of Titan Stories
By Philip Haldiman, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson Jul. 31--Our planet isn't the only heavenly body with liquid on its surface. Scientists from the University of Arizona and NASA on Wednesday announced at least one of the large, lakelike features on a moon of Saturn is wet. The moon, Titan, contains liquid hydrocarbons and ethane, scientists said. Besides Earth, this makes Titan the only known body in our solar system with liquid on its surface, NASA said in a press release. The lake...
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has a huge lake filled with liquid gas, U.S. researchers have confirmed. The lake, called Ontario Lacus, covers about 7,800 square miles at Titan's south pole, and is filled mostly with liquid methane and ethane, say researchers at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson, Ariz. This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid, said lead researcher Robert Brown. The finding,...
Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes. The new findings from the study led by Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., are reported in the Jan. 29 issue of the Geophysical Research...
Instruments on NASA's Cassini spacecraft have found evidence for seas, likely filled with liquid methane or ethane, in the high northern latitudes of Saturn's moon Titan. One such feature is larger than any of the Great Lakes of North America and is about the same size as several seas on Earth. Cassini's radar instrument imaged several very dark features near Titan's north pole. Much larger than similar features seen before on Titan, the largest dark feature measures at least 100,000 square...
A giant cloud half the size of the United States has been imaged on Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft. The cloud may be responsible for the material that fills the lakes discovered last year by Cassini's radar instrument. Cloaked by winter's shadow, this cloud has now come into view as winter turns to spring. The cloud extends down to 60 degrees north latitude, is roughly 2,400 kilometers (1,490 miles) in diameter and engulfs almost the entire north pole of Titan. The new image...
Scientists report definitive evidence of the presence of lakes filled with liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan in this week's journal Nature cover story. Radar imaging data from a July 22, 2006, flyby provide convincing evidence for large bodies of liquid on Titan today. A new false-color radar view gives a taste of what Cassini saw. Some highlights of the article follow below. Lake Characteristics: -Radar-dark patches are interpreted as lakes based on their very low radar reflectivity and...
The tallest mountains ever seen on Titan -- coated with layers of organic material and blanketed by clouds -- have been imaged on Saturn's moon Titan by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. "We see a massive mountain range that kind of reminds me of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the western United States. This mountain range is continuous and is nearly 100 miles long," said Dr. Bob Brown, team leader of the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer at the University of Arizona,...
Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) has detected what appears to be a massive ethane cloud surrounding Titan's north pole. The cloud might be snowing ethane snowflakes into methane lakes below. The cloud may be the clue needed in solving a puzzle that has confounded scientists who so far have seen little evidence of a veil of ethane clouds and surface liquids originally thought extensive enough to cover the entire surface of Titan with a 300-meter-deep ocean.Before the...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It has methane rain and white crystalline sand dunes, and now scientists say Saturn's moon Titan also has many lakes. The lakes are probably made up of methane, with a little ethane mixed in, and they are probably the source of the obscuring smog in the frigid moon's atmosphere, researchers reported on Friday. "This is a big deal," said Steve Wall, deputy radar team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "We've now seen a place other...
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found lakes on Saturn's moon Titan. The lakes are most likely the source of hydrocarbon smog in the frigid moon's atmosphere. Finding the source of the complex soup of hydrocarbons in Titan's atmosphere has been a major goal for the Cassini mission and is a significant accomplishment. Numerous well-defined dark patches resembling lakes are present in radar images of Titan's high latitudes taken during a July 22 flyby. At Titan's frigid temperatures, about minus...
