A newly released image of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon reveals details of seas or lakes near its northern pole.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/U. Arizona/U. Idaho
The false-color mosaic, made from infrared data collected by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, reveals the differences in the composition of surface materials around these hydrocarbon lakes. Titan is the only other place in the Solar System that we know has stable liquid on its surface – but its lakes are made of liquid ethane and methane rather than liquid 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.
The image data suggest parts of Titan’s lakes and seas may have evaporated and left behind the Titan equivalent of Earth’s salt flats. They appear orange in this image against the greenish backdrop of Titan’s typical bedrock of water ice.
