[X] My Assistant

[alan]

Solar system simulator shows an encouter under 500,000 km on June 6. Will there be a good view of the south pole on this pass?

[volcanopele]

I think those are just surface markings. Those we can match up to T0 features appear to be consistent, despite the change in illumination angle.

[tedstryk]

Here is an enhancement....I can't wait to see a non-jpeged processing of this image and those like it!

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[JRehling]

Here is an enhancement....I can't wait to see a non-jpeged processing of this image and those like it!

Great work... simple work, I guess, on an awesome image.

My sense is, with this image we've found our lakes, with verification coming after we get an opportunity to scan these with RADAR and/or align them for specular glints. If the lakes are there long enough for such a flyover (at the start of the extended mission?) to take place.

Titan's got long seasons. The observations so far are copacetic with this: The summer hemisphere sees sporadic methane clouds, most concentrated at the summer pole, and sometimes making a ring there. These clouds somehow lead to broader darkening of the overlying hazes. The clouds rain or mist down to the surface, wetting the summer pole and creating standing bodies of liquid and feeding seasonal systems that roughly flow equatorwards. That same pole may become dry during its autumn/winter.

The most exciting possibility would be if there is a winter ice cap lurking in the dark, that melts to release massive global floods as the equinox approaches, flooding the equatorial dark areas, which currently seem to be dry or damp at best, but to have endured floods in the past. If there is a seasonal cycle, then a new temporary ocean is a few years away. But, it may also turn out to be much longer, even an eon, since those dark areas were actually wet.

This image might well go down in history as a discovery/prediscovery image of great import.

[volcanopele]

  This image might well go down in history as a discovery/prediscovery image of great import.

It is very intriguing but we will need RADAR or a specular point analysis to prove the case. Nevertheless, this is the first feature I feel comfortable calling a "possible lake".

[dvandorn]

Careful, though -- it could also be an empty lakebed filled with the same sort of "mud" that Huygens landed on. It's hard to say.

Will RADAR reflect off the surface of an ethane or methane lake, or will it penetrate right to the solid icy surface underneath? In other words, will a RADAR pass tell us if that depression is filled with liquid, or not?

-the other Doug