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Liquid Lakes On Saturn's Moon Confirmed

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the time-for-a-saturn-icon dept.

Riding with Robots writes "Scientists have been using the robotic spacecraft Cassini to explore what looked to be large lakes of hydrocarbons on the surface of Saturn's planet-sized moon Titan. But they couldn't be entirely sure that the features were actually liquid lakes, and not simply very smooth, solid material. Now, new findings seem to confirm that the observations really do show extensive seas of liquid ethane and other hydrocarbons. In fact, Titan seems to have an entire 'water' cycle of ethane evaporation, rain and rivers."

2 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Tidal Lock by jeiler · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes, Titan is tidally locked. The Wikipedia article on Tidal locking may have a good list.

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  2. Re:Tidal Lock by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 4, Informative

    All of the medium to large satellites (Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, and Titan, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Phoebe), except Hyperion, which has a chaotic spin, and I think Phoebe, which is irregular as heck anyway. All the captured, irregular moons cannot be counted on to spin locked to the planet. The inner small moons (Pan, Daphnis, Atlas, Prometheus, Pandora, Janus, and Epimetheus) are tidally locked according to the data.