[X] My Assistant

[alan]

Images from instruments on Cassini as well as from telescopes on the ground reveal the presence of sporadic small-scale cloud activity in the cold late-winter north polar of Saturn's large moon Titan. These clouds lie underneath the previously discovered uniform polar cloud attributed to a quiescent ethane cloud at ~40 km and appear confined to the same latitudes as those of the largest known hydrocarbon lakes at the north pole of Titan. The physical properties of these clouds suggest that they are due to methane convection and condensation. Such convection has not been predicted for the cold winter pole, but can be caused by a process in many ways analogous to terrestrial lake-effect clouds

http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0809.1841

also discussed on Mike Brown's page
http://www.mikebrownsplanets.com/2008/09/j...ake-effect.html

[ngunn]

Maybe we'll see some in the next few days - this is from Ciclops 'looking ahead':

On September 20 and 21, as Cassini approaches apoapsis, ISS will perform two observations of Titan’s trailing hemisphere. These observations will be acquired from a distance of 1.55-1.81 million km (0.97-1.12 million mi). The observations are designed to look for cloud motions over an 18-hour period, as well as to look for changes at Kraken Mare (one of the large lakes in the northern polar region).