I HEART CHAOS

It’s coming up on spring in the northern hemisphere on Earth, and it’s also springtime on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. But while on Earth, spring is about life-giving rain feeding the rivers and the flowers, on Titan, it’s all about liquid methane coming down from the skies in a freezing and flammable mess.

In the image above, you can see a huge white arrow shape, which is the storm blowing across the equatorial region. The precipitation cycle on Titan involves the hydrocarbons methane and ethane, which pool in thousands of lakes around the North and South poles.

Titan’s atmosphere is very hazy and smoggy, and it is usually hard to see anything on the surface, but astronomers believe that the equator of the moon is circled with huge sand dunes up to 9 feet high, half a mile wide, and 50 miles long. The dunes are surrounded by dry river channels, possibly remnants of a wetter climate.

With the data from the Cassini probe, scientists compared images of Titan’s dunes between August 2009 and January 2011. Looking at sudden brightness decreases on the moon’s surface after clouds had passed over the region, the scientists were convinced that the ground was darker because it was wet. Dr. Elizabeth Turtle, a planetary geologist at Johns Hopkins University said, “It may be a case of surface wetting. It wouldn’t take much. A millimeter of rain over this area would have done it.”

According to Dr. Turtle, these findings are evidence that Titan, which is the only moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere and stable liquids at its surface, has weather patterns that similar to Earth’s. “We are seeing seasonal changes in the weather on Titan and that gives us insights into its climate,” she said.

Via