Friday, May 25, 2007

The seas of Titan

 Click on the small JPG to see a larger image. Look at it and try to imagine how far away Titan is, and imagine our miniscule orbiter circling about, taking pictures of the seas of methane sloshing around a cold, cold coast ...

Catalog Page for PIA09211

On May 12, 2007, Cassini completed its 31st flyby of Saturn's moon Titan ... The radar instrument obtained this image showing the coastline and numerous island groups of a portion of a large sea, consistent with the larger sea seen by the Cassini imaging instrument...

Like other bodies of liquid seen on Titan, this feature reveals channels, islands, bays, and other features typical of terrestrial coastlines, and the liquid, most likely a combination of methane and ethane, appears very dark to the radar instrument. What is striking about this portion of the sea compared to other liquid bodies on Titan is the relative absence of brighter regions within it, suggesting that the depth of the liquid here exceeds tens of meters ..

Maybe we're only an eyeblink in the evolutionary history of the earth, a miniscule layer of contaminated sediment eons from now. Maybe we won't make it through the next 60 years. But by golly, we took pictures of the seas of Titan. We'll have gone out swinging ...

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