This makes me wonder: If ice, at a lattitude and altitude that put temperature and pressure in the 'liquid water range', were exposed ona sunwards facing slope today (by landslide, impact, man digging with shovel, whatever) how much hydration would the immediate surroundings actually get? Because, as I understand it, even when Martian conditions are at their most water-favourable only small amounts would form, and only briefly.

I could believe however that a liquid water pocket(s) might form beneath the translucent surface of said exposed ice, and find its way surfacewards - but it still seems as though the surroundings wouldn't get very 'wet'. I do recall experiments with pure ice under martian conditions being done, but cannot find them Of course 'chemically enhanced' (antifreeze of some kind laden) water would be more stable....

Sorry, I meant by Dawn, as I recall that Herschel came up empty for water on a later observation which makes me wonder if the source is not actually intermittent.... but then I remembered it cannot sample the exosphere (at least directly).

Wouldn't any significant water ice on the surface outgass, and leave a detectable signature in ceres exosphere?

TBH I think it's public percception and funding that is more an object to such a follow on mission - Ceres will need to turn out to be the Europa of the inner solar system to get such a followup. Of course, it might do yet....

Having read that paper I'll float (he, he, he.. geddit.. no?)an idea that may be rediculously naive: wouldn't a major impact be good way for a pre existing a crack partway through the crust (due to the mechanism proposed in the paper) to be opened up and form a vent? The paper mentions impacts as a source of fracturing sans tensile cracking, why not combine them?

Oh my, talk about making the familiar unusual....

Thanks (and to john boughton)! The other thought I had was that the cetral peak had collapsed off to one side in a massive landslip that exposed fresh ice and piled some against the crater floor.

Would carbon doxide outgassing from subsurface resevoirs, driven by solar heat, be possible in the Cerean temperature regime. We know (or strongly suspect) that this is the force behind the 'mars siders'...

Sadly there still doesn't seem to be anything on the cards - as i understand it a trajectory that would allow for an orbital insertion would just be too slow, taking 15 yrs plus to get there. Don't quote me on that it's pulleds from the depths of my rather unreliable memory.

Thanks for the colourised images Ian! This is probably my brain playing tricks but to me it looks almost as if there's an underlying crosss hatching apttern of fine linear features scattered across the surface.

The elongated white blob in the upper centre of the second image here seems to have legs growing out if it...

Looking at the side by side comparison images in the press release, here, the despeckled images look much less like I was expecting - like they have giant seaweed draped ove the Titanian surface Parts of it just look... too smooth!

I see a brighter spot to the bright patch, which is below the center of the patch, a dark semi halo centred on the NE direction, nothing definitively ray - like. I think there is also a teensy tounge of dark material coming southwards into the bright patch? Whatever it is, this is very cool.

Working for an engineering firm where most of managment were promoted from sales... I tend to agree. But having worked both development and operations in my time I shoiuld say that both organised control and improvisation have their places, it's a question of context. No-one ever landed on a comet before. Meaningful science has been done. The PR folks are spinning the mistakes to be positives.. that's what they're paid to do, and they're paid to do it by managment and ESA culture, not the engineers and scientists.

If ESA managers are like my lot they probably wish they didn't need the inconvinently real-world based engineers and scientists at all...

Just offering up a thought I had, thank you for devoting some thought to it!

I have a thought that has been itching me all day, and I'd like to clear it out: Could these magic islands be tension wrinkles in a membrane that sits on top of the lake surface? If the lakes develop a fairly thick layer of something semi-solid, it might buckle and then relax as changing environmental conditions alter the overall tension. The specular reflections observed could be due to a thin liquid layer on the surface. It just struck me when my tea went cold that the patches of wrinkles on the skin looked a bit like the 'island'...

I hope it's an unexpected an uniquely Titanian emergent property of the physical and chemical properties of the stuff in the lakes - something truly unique to Titans bizzare environment would be amazing!

I love mysteries, especially when their circumstances mandate that even the most mundane explanation will be extraordinary.....

I'm glad to hear you say that, I was thinking I was imagining things - there are linear features, and even sets of narrowly spaced parallel furrows, in the images I've seen. My guess would be gas transport to, but who knows (yet)? Fascinating!

Thanks MarsInMyLifetime! Looking at the steep sided, flat topped, mound just to the lower right of the center of the image I've left in the quote... can anyone say if the bright top the result of a lighter deposit, or angle wrt the Sun?

I defer to superior knowledge....but the outlines of some of the surface features made me wonder if processes akin to those responsible for snow chimneys (transport of materials by escaping gas) might be at work.

I see a few distinctly finger or knife edge like 'rocks', as well as more rounded shapes. I wonder if most of what we're looking at isn't the resut of aeons of hydrocarbon materials settling into shpaes due to internal stresses (and vapour flows) as their ice sublimates? WRT surface composition: If the surface material is porous, could a significant amount of ice be caught in those pores, in the near subsurface?

And generally WOW.....

Edit: I didn't see this posted further up the thread: Dust from the comet already being collected

Great image. I think I can see a suggestion of a third jet on the left of the neck? To me it looks as though the lines of the jets lie something like in the attached image. It's not at all clear to me what angle the jets are relative to the local surface, or that they lie in the same plane, so I couldn't say where any originated except somewhere along their centre lines.

Depending on how evolved the comet is, and how it has evolved, the porosity may not be uniform. There may be volumes of far higher density, and near voids.