Chris Rowan is a geologist specialising in the dark arts of paleomagnetism, and getting people to pay him to travel to exotic destinations for fieldwork. Having drilled up New Zealand during his PhD, and South Africa in his first post-doc, he now works at the University of Edinburgh.
Anne Jefferson has a love of all things water-related and blends hydrology, geomorphology, geology, and climate change in her work. She has a Ph.D. from Oregon State University and is now an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Here's another cool image from Cassini, showing sunlight glinting off the surface of a lake in Titan's northern hemisphere.
Source: NASA/JPL
Cassini's radar has been mapping the lakes for the past couple of years, and we've been quite confident in calling them lakes because their smoothness and high reflectivity to radio waves indicate that they are indeed filled with what are probably liquid hydrocarbons. Somehow, though, a picture like this makes it seem more real. True, this 'eyeball confirmation' comes in the form of a heavily processed image taken at infrared wavelengths; but it still impresses me.
This is the first time since Cassini reached Saturn that a picture like this would have been possible - Titan's nothern hemisphere is just emerging from its winter, exposing the lakes to sunlight for the first time in about 15 years. It will be interesting to see what effect the change of seasons may have on them - current thinking seems to be that they will shrink by evaporation, whilst a rainy winter in the (presently drier) southern hemisphere will lead to the growth of new lakes there. Hopefully Cassini will survive long enough too see whether this is the case or not.
Titan's North Pole. Source: NASA/JPL, downloaded from Wikipedia
Physical Science
Comments
Okay, so what does this excactly mean? Some form Life on that planet existed or exist?
Posted by: Palscience.com | December 21, 2009 12:34 PM
A Lake of hydrocarbons... What corporation is going to go establish a colony to mine it. And what hydrocarbon is it?? That is what I really want to know.
Posted by: rwd | December 21, 2009 5:29 PM
It's probably simple methane. And it's possible that organisms could survive there via methanogenesis but the likelihood is low as the temperature is somewhere around -180 C.
Posted by: Jim Bob Cooter | December 22, 2009 3:20 PM