SETI bioastro: FW: Cassini Provides New Views of Titan''s Land of Lakes and Seas

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>From: "NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory" <info_at_jpl.nasa.gov>
>Reply-To: <info_at_jpl.nasa.gov>
>Subject: Cassini Provides New Views of Titan''s Land of Lakes and Seas
>Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:42:16 -0700
>
>MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
>JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
>CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
>NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
>PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
>http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
>
>Carolina Martinez 818-354-9382
>Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
>carolina.martinez_at_jpl.nasa.gov
>
>IMAGE ADVISORY: 2007-117 Oct. 11, 2007
>
>Cassini Provides New Views of Titan's Land of Lakes and Seas
>
>Newly assembled radar images from the Cassini spacecraft provide the best
>view of the
>hydrocarbon lakes and seas on the north pole of Saturn's moon Titan, while
>a new radar image
>reveals that Titan's south polar region also has lakes.
>
>The southern region images were beamed back after an Oct. 2 flyby in which
>a prime goal was
>the hunt for lakes at the south pole.
>
>A new mosaic image, created by stitching together radar images from seven
>Titan flybys over the
>last year and a half, shows a north pole pitted with giant lakes and seas,
>at least one of them
>larger than Lake Superior.
>
>Approximately 60 percent of Titan's north polar region above 60 degrees
>latitude has been
>mapped by Cassini's radar instrument. About 14 percent of the mapped region
>is covered by
>what scientists interpret as liquid hydrocarbon lakes.
>
>"This is our version of mapping Alaska, the northern parts of Canada,
>Greenland, Scandinavia
>and Northern Russia," said Rosaly Lopes, Cassini radar scientist at NASA's
>Jet Propulsion
>Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It's like mapping these regions of Earth for
>the first time."
>
>Lakes and seas are very common at the high northern latitudes of Titan,
>which is in winter now.
>Scientists say it rains methane and ethane there, filling the lakes and
>seas. These liquids also
>carve meandering rivers and channels on the moon's surface. Now Cassini is
>moving into
>unknown territory, the south pole of Titan. "We wanted to see if there are
>more lakes present
>there and, sure enough, there they are, three little lakes smiling back at
>us. Titan is indeed the
>land of lakes and seas," said Lopes. "It will be interesting to see the
>differences between the
>north and south polar regions."
>
>It is now summer at Titan's south pole. A season on Titan lasts nearly
>7.5 years, one quarter of a
>Saturn year, which is 29.5 years long. Monitoring seasonal change helps
>scientists understand
>the processes at work there.
>
>Scientists are making progress in understanding how the lakes may have
>formed. On Earth, lakes
>fill low spots or are created when the local topography intersects a
>groundwater table. Lopes and
>her colleagues think that the depressions containing the lakes on Titan may
>have formed by
>volcanism or by a type of erosion (called karstic) of the surface, leaving
>a depression where
>liquids can accumulate. Karstic lakes are common on Earth. For example in
>parts of Minnesota
>and central Florida there are hundreds of such lakes.
>
>"The lakes we are observing on Titan appear to be in varying states of
>fullness, suggesting their
>involvement in a complex hydrologic system akin to Earth's water cycle.
>This makes Titan
>unique among the extra-terrestrial bodies in our solar system," said Alex
>Hayes, a graduate
>student who studies Cassini radar data at the California Institute of
>Technology in Pasadena.
>
>"The lakes we have seen so far vary in size from the smallest observable,
>approximately 1 square
>kilometer (0.4 square miles), to greater than 100,000 square kilometers
>(40,000 square miles),
>which is slightly larger than the Great Lakes in the Midwestern U.S.,"
>Hayes said. "Of the
>roughly 400 observed lakes, 70 percent of their area is taken up by large
>"seas" greater than
>26,000 square kilometers (10,000 square miles)."
>
>Future radar flybys will image closer to the southern pole and are expected
>to show more lakes.
>
>For images and more information visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and
>http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .
>
>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
>Space Agency
>and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute
>of Technology in
>Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission
>Directorate,
>Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at
>JPL. The radar
>instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team
>members from the
>United States and several European countries.
>
>-end-
>
>

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