Titan's changing lakes Options

[volcanopele]

Almost connected but not quite. The closest they get to each other is about 95 km between 71.73N,323.43W on Kraken Mare's western shore and 71.68W, 330.36W on the eastern shore of the lake discussed here. These features are far enough south that we have good enough signal/noise to make out the shorelines pretty distinctly.

Not that big of a deal. Just would like to see this fairly large lake (230x70 km) that still doesn't have a name get its day in the sun I would also love to see some of these reflections on Kraken Mare proper. Have to confirm my multi-trillion dollar nestegg after all

[ngunn]

That's fantastic - I really wasn't expecting the image itself to be so striking.

[Jason W Barnes]

Almost connected but not quite. The closest they get to each other is about 95 km between 71.73N,323.43W on Kraken Mare's western shore and 71.68W, 330.36W on the eastern shore of the lake discussed here.

Maybe so, but there's no continuous RADAR coverage and I don't see it in the image you posted.

- Jason

[stevesliva]

They'll just have to call it Kraken-egg Lacus if there's no connection.

[volcanopele]

Maybe so, but there's no continuous RADAR coverage and I don't see it in the image you posted.

- Jason

The left image is from T25 (February 2007) and the right one is from Rev88 (October 2008). Both images show Kraken Mare and the lake to the west of it, the originator of the specular reflection according to the location in VIMS's press release. Both show that there is medium-albedo material between the two features, STRONGLY suggesting, based on the appearance of lakes and non-lake solid material in the north polar region in ISS images that there is no connection between the two features. The only hint of one that I can see comes from the T25 image, between the northern ends of both the "sunglint lake" and Kraken Mare, is ruled out in the RADAR SAR data.

[Guest_Enceladus75_*]

That image is stunning and iconic. It speaks to the viewer about liquid on Titan's surface in a way radar images and other remote sensing techniques can't.

Yet another to add to the already superb collection of Cassini images.

[HughFromAlice]

That image is stunning and iconic..... superb collection of Cassini images.

Yep! Stunning....... and also - in the best sense of the word - humbling.

Also it's great that people like Jason post here on UMSF so we get interesting and significant corrections (The popular scientific media can be suprisingly sloppy at times). If such a small lake throws such a specular reflection, then ....!!!

+ I got to find out what 'azeotrope' means (Wikipedia saved me !!!).

[Stu]

Oh, so a Titanian lake shows lens flare and everyone loves it... I put a little lens flare on a pic and I'm mentally disturbed...!!!

Love that pic. Outreach gold!

[nprev]

If such a small lake throws such a specular reflection, then ....!!!

...yeah! From VP's description it ain't all that small, but it sure seems to be smooth. Is there anything to be learned about the presumed light surface winds (little convection, even as the Sun hits it for the first time in a long time?), or the viscosity of the fluid if the surface winds are constrained?

Pretty pic with potentially a great deal of interesting information.

[HughFromAlice]

Small....... comparatively!!!

[imipak]

The BBC has a pleasantly unsloppy piece on the proposed Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) Discovery mission, quoting a chap called "Dr Ralph Lorenz". They've used the lake-glint image, which is nice.

[volcanopele]

I have no doubt that the VIMS folks have done the work to show that this reflection couldn't come from anything but body of liquid methane or ethane, but keep in mind that a specular reflection can be generated by non-liquid surfaces, like the glassy surfaces of basaltic lava flows

[scalbers]

Spectacular glint image and I agree with the "iconic" status that Bob Pappalardo gives this image. Now with northern spring we might anticipate seeing more of these coming up. I wonder if the size of the glint is constrained mostly by the size of the lake, size of the sun, or roughness of any waves? Potential glint expansion due to roughness might be more in the "up/down" direction than sideways. Over what range of phase angles will it be possible to observe glints? Looking at the reflectivity of the surface knowing the phase angle could yield the refractive index and thus information about composition.

VP, what type of non-liquid flat material would likely be on Titan? Could we expect basaltic lavas? What is the chance they would correlate in location with the purported lakes on Titan?

[titanicrivers]

Here's a map:

Here's another look at T25, Kraken & Sunglint and a higher-res map from VP's N polar map he posted in T48-49 (post #9).

[djellison]

I knew it would happen - the moment someone expresses the price of a mission as multiples or fractions of something, someone steps in with an entirely irrelevant movie reference, and someone steps in with a manned v unmanned reference.

Three posts deleted.