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Surf’s Up on Titan! Cassini May Have Spotted Waves in Titan’s Seas
Cassini VIMS image showing specular reflections in one of Titan’s many lakes during the T85 flyby on July 24, 2012 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Jason W. Barnes et al.)
It’s no surprise that Titan’s north polar region is covered with vast lakes and seas of liquid methane — these have been imaged many times by Cassini during its ten years in orbit around Saturn. What is surprising though is just how incredibly smooth the surfaces of these lakes have been found to be.
One would think that such large expanses of surface liquid — some of Titan’s seas are as big the Great Lakes — would exhibit at least a little surface action on a world with an atmosphere as dense as Titan’s. But repeated radar imaging has shown their surfaces to be “as smooth as the paint on a car.” Over the past several years scientists have puzzled over this anomaly but now they may have truly seen the light — that is, reflected light from what could actually be waves on Titan!
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Read the rest of Surf’s Up on Titan! Cassini May Have Spotted Waves in Titan’s Seas (301 words)
© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2014. |
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Post tags: Cassini, Jason W. Barnes, lakes, LPI, Moon, Saturn, Titan, VIMS, waves
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Source: http://www.universetoday.com/110425/surfs-up-on-titan-cassini-may-have-spotted-waves-in-titans-seas/
