[X] My Assistant

[titanicrivers]

Titan topics @ AGU 2008

The following links originally posted by E. Lakdawalla in her Planetary Society blog of 12-8-08 takes one to the interesting poster and platform session abstracts to be presented at the AGU this week. Lots of thought provoking topics covering Titan's atmosphere and surface!
http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/sessions5?meeti...amp;maxhits=400
http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/sessions5?meeti...amp;maxhits=400
http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/sessions5?meeti...amp;maxhits=400

[Juramike]

I think portions of the channels might be incised:


Note RADAR-dark line parallel and S of the RADAR bright channel at the 3 o'clock position. This is consistent with a channel feature seen outside the Ganesa Macula region (on other side of ridge, N of the brightish alluvial looking things).

This is also consistent with RADAR look direction from the S (looking towards the N; this part of the Ganesa image is derived from the T3 RADAR swath (see: Elachi et al. Science 308 (2005) 970-974))

There is also a branch off the 3 o'clock position trending to the SW (4 o'clock) that displays a darker region S of the channel and the brighter region N of the channel. This might (?) be consistent with a negative slope (downhill to N) of the S section, and a positive slope (uphill to N) of the are N of this channel. So the channel might be in a broad valley/canyon in this section.

Based on the channel gradient and RADAR speculation, I would predict that this portion in the SE part of Ganesa would be topographically higher, and that the channel is at the bottom of a deep broad regional valley in a local topographic high.

(And I haven't seen the AGU presentation, so I could be wayyy off: Hero or goat time!)


-Mike