Space Briefs
Titan’s northern lakes
resemble Earth’s salt flats
With the sun now shining down over the north pole of Saturn’s moon Titan, a little luck with
the weather, and trajectories that put the spacecraft into optimal viewing positions, NASA’s
Cassini spacecraft has obtained new pictures of the liquid methane and ethane seas and
lakes that reside near Titan’s north pole. The images reveal new clues about how the lakes
formed and about Titan’s Earth-like “hydrologic” cycle, which involves hydrocarbons rather
than water.
While there is one large lake and a few smaller ones near Titan’s south pole, almost all of
Titan’s lakes appear near the moon’s north pole. Cassini scientists have been able to study
much of the terrain with radar, which can penetrate beneath Titan’s clouds and thick haze.
And until now, Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer and imaging science
subsystem had only been able to capture distant, oblique or partial views of this area.
Several factors combined recently to give these instruments great observing opportunities.
Two recent flybys provided better viewing geometry. Sunlight has begun to pierce the winter
darkness that shrouded Titan’s north pole at Cassini’s arrival in the Saturn system