Possible Cryovolcano Discovered on Titan

Rei writes "NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is reporting that the Cassini spacecraft has observed what appears to be a cryovolcano on Saturn's moon Titan. Given the absense of a global methane sea on Titan, the snail-shaped structure with what appears to be a caldera on top could explain how Titan's methane stays replenished. It could further explain the dry drainage channels discovered by the Huygens lander as being formed by heavy methane rainfall after eruptions."

Comments

Re:Titan Climatology

[youngerpants]

Not necessarily, pyroclastic flows on Earth are flows of solid matter (rocks) that can occur during periods of volcanic activity.

Although they are made out of "solid" matter the flows seem almost liquid in nature. Don't think of the methane as one huge frozen lump, but rather many solid lumps in motion.

Definition of Cryovolcano

[httpamphibio.us]

"Cryovolcanoes are pseudo-volcanoes believed to be present on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. Unlike volcanoes on Earth which spew hot lava, cryvolcanoes bring super-cool "lava" to the surface of their planets. They are volcanic-like vents that spew forth ice, water or vapor-phase volatiles, with some gas driven solid fragments instead of lava. It is suggetsed that they could be present on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. However it has only been seen on Triton, the biggest of Neptune's moons. Also it is said that they might be active in Europa and Enceladus.

This term was coined by NASA in late 2004, when the Cassini space probe observed cryvolcanoes and cryogenic lakes for the first time."

definition quoted from explore-dictionary.com

Take a look for yourself

[Chris84000000]

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day show a nice picture of this.

If you're interested in this stuff, bookmark http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html, which just points to the current picture of the day.