The Planetary Society Weblog
By Emily Lakdawalla
They found the lakes on Titan!
Jul. 24, 2006 | 15:11 PDT | 22:11 UTC
...at least it really, really looks like lakes! The Cassini mission has just released two chunks of the "T16" RADAR swath acquired over the weekend, and they include tons of very dark, sharp-boundaried features that look like what the RADAR team expects lakes on Titan to look like. I just had a long chat with Rosaly Lopes about these pictures and she's really thrilled about them; I'm putting together an article based on what she had to say, which I'll post here later. But I didn't want to wait to spread the news -- woo hoo, lakes on Titan (very probably)! Probable lakes near Titan's north poleCassini's "T16" flyby on July 22, 2006 took it up to high latitudes near the north pole. RADAR images across the region contain numerous very dark splotches with sharp-edged boundaries, which may be the long-sought methane or ethane lakes on the surface of Titan. This image is centered near 80 degrees north, 92 west and measures about 420 kilometers by 150 kilometers (260 miles by 93 miles). Credit: NASA / JPL | Probable lakes near Titan's north poleCassini's "T16" flyby on July 22, 2006 took it up to high latitudes near the north pole. RADAR images across the region contain numerous very dark splotches with sharp-edged boundaries, which may be the long-sought methane or ethane lakes on the surface of Titan. This image is centered near 78 degrees north, 18 degrees west measures about 475 kilometers by 150 kilometers (295 miles by 93 miles). Credit: NASA / JPL |
Just for grins, here's the photo from Cassini's cameras showing a southern polar feature that they identified as a probable lake:A candidate lake on Titan?
The footprint-like feature in the upper left corner of this image is the unusual-looking feature that Cassini imaging scientists think may be a hydrocarbon lake. It is roughly 234 kilometers long by 73 kilometers wide (145 miles by 45 miles), about the size of Lake Ontario (a lake on the U.S.-Canadian border). The red cross below center identifies the location of Titan's south pole. Credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute |
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