Possible lake on Saturn's moon Titan

[dr. what]

CNN

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Could Saturn's moon Titan be a land of lakes?

A new image captured by the Cassini spacecraft indicates that it just might -- though the possible lake in question could be filled with liquid methane rather than water, NASA said on Tuesday.

The putative lake appears in a Cassini image of Titan's south polar region, a well-defined but irregularly shaped dark spot with smooth, shore-like boundaries unlike anything previously seen on this Saturn satellite.

It is about 145 miles by 45 miles (234 km by 73 km), about the size of Lake Ontario on the U.S.-Canadian border, Cassini scientists said in a statement.

"This feature is unique in our exploration of Titan so far," said Elizabeth Turtle, Cassini imaging team associate at the University of Arizona. "Its perimeter is intriguingly reminiscent of the shorelines of lakes on Earth that are smoothed by water erosion and deposition."

It lies in Titan's cloudiest region, where astronomers believe there might be methane rain.

"It's possible that some of the storms in this region are strong enough to make methane rain that reaches the surface," said Cassini team member Tony DelGenio of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

Because of extreme cold temperatures on Titan, the liquid methane could take a long time to evaporate, which would let a methane-filled lake last for a long while, DelGenio said.

The dark splotch might also be a former lake that has now dried, or a broad depression filled with dark, solid hydrocarbons, the scientists said.

[Quadlok]

I hear the fishings lovely this time of year.

For people who actually might know, is the scientific community actually surprised by this? Because I've been watching documentaries for years that show CG graphics of suspected hydrocarbon lakes on Titan.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I hear the fishings lovely this time of year.

For people who actually might know, is the scientific community actually surprised by this? Because I've been watching documentaries for years that show CG graphics of suspected hydrocarbon lakes on Titan.

Actually, the scientific community is surprised that there aren't more of them. They were expecting a world possibly awash with seas of liquid hydrocarbons. And the initial Cassini images seemed to lend credence to this. The problem comes with more Cassini imagery. The problem is that we're not seeing the specular highlighting we'd expect to see if there were liquids reflecting light back at us. The dark hydrocarbon-rich areas on Titan seem to be just that, dark hydrocarbon-rich areas. We originally suspected they may be seas, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Yes, we've found evidence to suggest that there are methane rains on the world, but it seems that any liquid methane that falls washes hydrocarbons off the highlands and carries them to the lowlands, where it evaporates again.

Though the lake at the south pole isn't too surprising. After all, that's where the bulk of Titan's clouds seem to be, so that would be where the bulk of the rain is falling.

[Chmee]

So what kind of lander do you send down to check *that* out?