We now have a better picture than ever of what the unbelievable landscapes of Saturn ’s moon Titan see like . On the lactating north pole of the moon , there are many tremendous lakes — and newly - analyzed images from Cassini spacecraft expose that they ’re surround by dramatic Strategic Arms Limitation Talks flats .
NASA ’s Cassini spacecraft found the salt flats by find differences in the report of Earth’s surface materials around icy lake on Titan , Saturn ’s with child Sun Myung Moon . Although its lakes are made of liquid C2H6 and methane rather than liquid water , Titan is the only place other than Earth in the solar arrangement that we know has stable liquid on its surface . With the exception of one large lake and a few modest ones near Titan ’s south magnetic pole , almost all of Titan ’s lake are near the moonlight ’s north pole .
The orange domain in the mosaic image are recall to be evaporite — the Titanian eq of salt flats on Earth . This material is in all probability pen of constitutional chemicals that originally form part of the cap of haze the covers the Titanian pole . These chemicals were at one time break up in liquid methane . They appear orange in the image against the green background of Titan ’s typical bedrock of water ice . ( These are all false people of colour , of course , created to heighten the differences in control surface materials . )
In the upper right of the mosaic is Kraken Mare , Titan ’s largest sea , covers about the same area as Earth ’s Caspian Sea and Lake Superior combined . The sour area above and to the left hand of Kraken is Ligeia Mare , the secondly largest ocean . Below Ligeia is Punga Mare , the third Titanian Sea . Numerous other smaller lakes dot the field . Titan ’s north terminal is locate just above the end of the “ finger’s breadth ” of Punga Mare .
The resolution varies across the arial mosaic , which was created from a number of disjoined images , calculate on when each cube of information was get , but the good surface sampling is as little as 2 naut mi ( 3 kilometers ) per pixel .
Learn more atCassini Imaging Central Lab for Operations
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