NASA: Finally, Cassini finds those hydrocarbon lakes on Saturn’s satellite Titan

When the Huygens probe landed on Titan early this year after dropping from the Cassini orbiter of Saturn, researchers were disappointed it saw what looked like rivers and congealed asphalt, but no lakes of petroleum-like hydrocarbon liquids. Models of the frigid methane-rich atmosphere predicted lakes or even seas. Now radar images of the moon’s north polar region seems to show lots of them. The Cassini mother ship got them July 22 as it sped past Titan during one of its orbits of the main planet. NASA put out a press release late this week. It comes as other stories updating Titan’s goopy, methane-drizzling weather report — but not quite confirming lakes — are running due to publication of older data in this week’s Nature. Links to both sorts of stories are grouped below. The British press in particular seems more keen on this than that of the US. The Tracker likes the subhed on The Register’s lake story: “Hoist the mainsail…”. A sailor there could be called a tar for a literal reason.

Stories:

Register (UK) Lucy Sherriff; BBC; ScienceNow (AAAS) Richard Kerr; Telegraph (UK) Roger Highfield; Reuters; National Geographic News Richard A. Lovett;

Grist for the Mill: NASA lake Press Release; Basque University Press Release; NASA Press Release on related Titan imagery via SpaceRef.com;