Lake on Titan Resembles Namibia Mudflat
Posted on April 27, 2012
Ontario Lacus, a footprint-shaped lake on Saturn's moon Titan, resembles a salt pan on Earth in Namibia called the Etosha Pan. You can see a larger version of the above image here.
A group of reseachers led by Thomas Cornet of the Universite de Nantes, France, a Cassini associate, found evidence for long-standing channels etched into the lake bed within the southern boundary of the depression. This suggests that Ontario Lacus, previously thought to be completely filled with liquid hydrocarbons, could actually be a depression that drains and refills from below, exposing liquid areas ringed by materials like saturated sand or mudflats.
Cornet, whose paper appears in a recent issue of the journal Icarus, says, "We conclude that the solid floor of Ontario Lacus is most probably exposed in those areas."
Bonnie Buratti, a co-author and Cassini team member based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif, says, "Some of the things we see happening in our own backyard are right there on Titan to study and learn from. On Earth, salt pans tend to form in deserts where liquids can suddenly accumulate, so it appears the same thing is happening on Titan."
The liquid in Ontario Lacus is a combination of methane, ethane, and propane, rather than water, due to extremely cold temperatures of 90 Kelvin (about minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit). Ontario Lacus has a surface area of about 6,000 square miles, which is slightly smaller than its namesake, Earth's Lake Ontario.
Here is a video tour of Ontario Lacus, courtesy of NASA's Cassini. Take a look: