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Photo of Coastal Dune Lake on Titan

Kurt avatar
KurtAdmin
582 views1
Well, I'm not sure about the coastal or the dune part, but it is the first picture of a lake not of this earth.



See that shiny thing? That's a lake. But it's nowhere in Earth. It's in Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, 80% more massive than Earth's moon, and the only satellite with a dense atmosphere. According to Bob Pappalardo, from NASA:
This one image communicates so much about Titan - thick atmosphere, surface lakes and an otherworldliness. It's an unsettling combination of strangeness yet similarity to Earth.
​
The image of the lake was captured by the Cassini spacecraft on July 8. The probe was looking for this image since it arrived to Saturn in 2004. Previously, Cassini detected liquid methane lakes using infrared data, but this picture shows the 400,000-square-kilometer Kraken Mare lake in a way that has never seen before. So beautiful. [Wired Science]

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5
Kurt avatar
KurtAdminAuthor
#2
SPACE.com -- Saturn Moon's 'Lake Ontario': Shallow and Virtually Wave-free
A giant hydrocarbon lake on Saturn's moon Titan is mirror-flat and surprisingly shallow, with average depths comparable to that of a backyard swimming pool, according to a new study. Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in Titan's southern hemisphere, covers about 6,000 square miles (15,000 square kilometers). While big, it's not exactly fierce; Ontario's waves are less than a dime's-width high, and the lake can't be any deeper than 24 feet (7.4 meters) in any one spot, researchers found.
"The volume of hydrocarbons is actually quite small," said lead author Lauren Wye of Stanford University, who presented her team's results here Wednesday (Dec. 15) at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. "The shallowness was a surprise."
Lake View Too avatar
Lake View TooSoWal Insider
#3
SPACE.com -- Saturn Moon's 'Lake Ontario': Shallow and Virtually Wave-free

They can measure the heighth of waves (less than a dime's width) on a lake on the moon of a planet a kajillion miles away...awesome, but a bit of a strange allocation of time, energy, and money. I guess those guys have a lot of time and money to burn. :idontno:
Kurt avatar
KurtAdminAuthor
#5
Kurt, I don't know if you saw it, but there was a story on Australia's Fraser Island a few months back. Some of the photos are very reminiscent of SOWAL, especially the tannin stained waters flowing from bogs to the blue sea.

Fraser Island - Photo Gallery - National Geographic Magazine

Awesome - thank you! :clap:
Jdarg avatar
JdargSoWal Expert
#6
They can measure the heighth of waves (less than a dime's width) on a lake on the moon of a planet a kajillion miles away...awesome, but a bit of a strange allocation of time, energy, and money. I guess those guys have a lot of time and money to burn. :idontno:

It's all about neverending curiosity about anything and everything- always a good thing.

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