Titan's Equatorial Sand Seas |
Titan's Equatorial Sand Seas |
May 7 2007, 03:53 PM
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2785 Joined: 10-November 06 From: Pasadena, CA Member No.: 1345 |
I’ve put together a sequence of events that could explain the morphology of the Equatorial Sand Seas. (An example basin similar to Shangri-La is shown)
This could explain the ria-like topography [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ria] on the Eastern shore, as well as the VIMS dark blue western parts of the Sand seas, and the placement of the dark brown unit on the Eastern parts of the sand seas. 1. Basin formation. 2. Water-ice sand deposition [slowly, suddenly?] forms an ice-sand margin 3. Mobile dark brown dune sands deposit on E side, depositing inland up W facing valleys. :attachment] The dark brown sands will blow in following the predominantly W winds and make a dust coating on low-lying terrains on the eastern margins. This will be visible by VIMS and ISS as the dark-bright margin, placed “inland” from the "real margin" and will accentuate the local topography as seen by optical instruments. This accentuation on the E margin will make the Equatorial Sand Sea visible margin look “swoopy” and windblown (in effect, it is) from the dark basin. Similarly, the W margin will have a dark blue zone that appears blown from the western bright areas. On the Eastern shore, the RADAR images will place the smooth-dark/mottled gray boundary far to the W of the VIMS brown dark-bright margin. (RADAR should be able to penetrate a thin coating of dark sands). The features in the limbo zone have been covered by dark sands, perhaps not enough to form dune structures, but enough to cover up the ice-sand margin, the near shore terrain, and perhaps even some of the underlying bright terrain. This makes the deposition sequence in the Equatorial Sand Seas: 1: Basin formation 2. Major water ice sand emplacement 3. Dune sands cover up low-lying downwind valleys (enough to mask visible imagery) Other Equatorial Sand Sea basins should look very similar around Titan: Shangri-La, Belet, Senkyo, Fensal and Quivra. Local winds may play a bonus role, but the overall trend of dark sand deposition up valley should be towards the E. For example: the false-color image in Figure 6 of the Soderblom paper seems to imply a predominant wind vector in Fensal and Quivra to the ESE. [I’m pretty sure all this has been described in pieces before, but it gave me a really great excuse to play with PowerPoint. ] -Mike -------------------- Some higher resolution images available at my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/
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May 14 2007, 09:56 PM
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 3242 Joined: 11-February 04 From: Tucson, AZ Member No.: 23 |
Well, it would be nice if it erupted. That would make it much easier
To be honest, it would require a good ISS/VIMS observation of Ganesa to determine what a Ganesa-type feature looks like in VIMS and ISS images. My basis for saying, at the very least, to hold off on declaring that feature a crater, is that while it is circular, there are a number of other ways to form circular features, like the Ganesa-type pancake dome. The apparent flow to the east and north and the fact that it doesn't match the appearance of other dark terrain craters (Guabonito, Sinlap, Velas, and the guy north of Adiri), with very dark interiors, intermediate albedo crater walls, and bright raised rims/ejecta blankets also suggest that we should serious consider a cryovolcanic origin for this feature. But, I'll admit the evidence is about as conclusive as Tortola Facula (the VIMS snail from Ta) being a cryovolcano. -------------------- &@^^!% Jim! I'm a geologist, not a physicist!
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