| Title | Cassini Finds Flooded Canyons on Titan | |
| Date | Sunday August 14 2016, @07:22PM | |
| Author | martyb | |
| Topic | ||
| from the methane,-ethane,-propane... dept. | ||
NASA has found hydrocarbon-filled canyons on Titan:
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found deep, steep-sided canyons on Saturn's moon Titan that are flooded with liquid hydrocarbons. The finding represents the first direct evidence of the presence of liquid-filled channels on Titan, as well as the first observation of canyons hundreds of meters deep.
A new paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters describes how scientists analyzed Cassini data from a close pass the spacecraft made over Titan in May 2013. During the flyby, Cassini's radar instrument focused on channels that branch out from the large, northern sea Ligeia Mare.
The Cassini observations reveal that the channels -- in particular, a network of them named Vid Flumina -- are narrow canyons, generally less than half a mile (a bit less than a kilometer) wide, with slopes steeper than 40 degrees. The canyons also are quite deep -- those measured are 790 to 1,870 feet (240 to 570 meters) from top to bottom.
Liquid-filled canyons on Titan (open, DOI: 10.1002/2016GL069679)
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