Flooded rivers and more lakes have been spied on Saturn’s moon Titan in new images by the Cassini spacecraft. The features are all likely filled with liquid methane or ethane, providing insight into a methane cycle analogous to the hydrological cycle on Earth. Cassini has revealed dozens of dark areas by peering through the hazy atmosphere with its radar instrument. Previous flybys of the giant moon suggested these were lakes. The lakes seen by radar are clustered around the north polar region. They may be seasonal, accumulating at each pole from winter rains and drying up during the summer. Spring is now approaching for Titan’s northern hemisphere and some of the lakes there show indeed signs of evaporation. A lake with many lobes has been seen in the latest flyby of the moon, on October 9, 2006, suggesting it was created when a system of interconnecting rivers overflowed their banks to fill in the surrounding topography.
Lakes and More Lakes