[X] My Assistant

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

The mission description document is now online (1.1 Mb PDF).

[volcanopele]

Two cutouts from Monday's T19 Titan flyby show more lakes in the north polar region. In "Lakes and more lakes", methane and ethane have filled eroded river valleys, creating lakes that resemble Lake Powell and Lake Mead in the Southwest United States. In the second released cutout, Titan's Great Lakes?, several lakes appear to be have drainage channels, allowing methane from through the region to flow into the two large lakes at the top of the strip.

[JRehling]

Two cutouts from Monday's T19 Titan flyby show more lakes in the north polar region. In "Lakes and more lakes", methane and ethane have filled eroded river valleys, creating lakes that resemble Lake Powell

Before I finished reading your sentence, I clicked on that link, and thought, "Hey, that's Lake Powell!"

[volcanopele]

In the "Titan's Great Lakes?" image, you can see channels that discharge into large lakes at the top of the frame. I've highlighted some of the channels in the attachment below, in red. I've also highlight the flood plain of the main channel:

[tty]

Two cutouts from Monday's T19 Titan flyby show more lakes in the north polar region. In "Lakes and more lakes", methane and ethane have filled eroded river valleys, creating lakes that resemble Lake Powell and Lake Mead in the Southwest United States. In the second released cutout, Titan's Great Lakes?, several lakes appear to be have drainage channels, allowing methane from through the region to flow into the two large lakes at the top of the strip.

Here on Earth coastlines looking like that would be interpreted as being the result of water recently invading river valley systems and not yet having had time to modify the morphology.
Lake Mead or Lake Powell as you say, or a transgressive "Ria" coast like parts of England or Ireland, or the Carolinas inside the sand barrier.
Is it methane flooding season on Titan?

tty

[Thorsten]

Wow! The cutouts from this radar pass are not only scientifically interesting, but also of incredible scenic beauty!
(At the risk of doing something quite silly, I have attached an artistic interpretation of one of these north polar channels, meandering over miles and miles through a hilly landscape with deeply cut valleys or wide floodplains and finally draining into a good-sized lake. (The human observer to the left is purely speculative)).

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[ugordan]

The human observer to the left is purely speculative

Isn't he also Chinese?

[climber]

Wow! The cutouts from this radar pass are not only scientifically interesting, but also of incredible scenic beauty!
(At the risk of doing something quite silly, I have attached an artistic interpretation of one of these north polar channels, meandering over miles and miles through a hilly landscape with deeply cut valleys or wide floodplains and finally draining into a good-sized lake. (The human observer to the left is purely speculative)).

I don't know how "others" behave but, I personaly need to see a representation of what spacecrafts "see", either in visible light or IR or UV ..or Radar. Some people here are VERY good to create pictures from those spacecrafts data, some put some poetry inside those pictures, some show Earth scenary that remind them what they see on other planets, and some others post artistics representations (as you say). All deserve the same THANKS for helping our brains to get a sense of the reality, even if only a sense. So, thank you Thorsten, you know you're not SO far in the representation of what Titan looks like.

[ngunn]

I am still seeing details within the darkest parts of these images. Could somebody (volcanopele?) please indicate the outlines of the areas you think are actually standing liquid surfaces at the time of imaging?

Thorsten there is nothing at all silly about your line drawing - keep them coming.

[ugordan]

It's plain to see which areas in the RADAR images are much darker. The fact that we're seeing details in those regions as well could simply indicate the lakes are shallow so we actually get a radar reflection off the bottom. Remember the radar beam penetrates through liquids fairly well, only a substantially deep lake would give back very little echo -- probably several meters in depth.

[Thorsten]

A similar conclusion was reached in the case of the “Kissing Lakes” (PIA08740).
Lighter patches in one of the lakes were considered as an indication that this lake is shallower, with radar signals penetrating through the liquid and reflecting off the lakebed.

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.n...line-news_rss20

[volcanopele]

Very nice drawing Thorsten! Mind if I pass this along to our local Titan group?

The RADAR team is interpreting variations within the lakes to indicate that they are sensing the lake bottoms in some places. This would indicate that these lakes are quite shallow, maybe on the order of a few 10s of meters.

[ngunn]

Yes I've been keeping up with the posts on this, and it's still far from obvious to me at what point on the images you actually get your feet wet.

[volcanopele]

Here are the outlines of the lakes PIA01942

[MahFL]

Are they 100 % certain they actually have wet lakes, or just dry lake beds ?