Titan Seas Reflect Sunlight
Why would the surface of Titan light up with a blinding flash?
The reason: a
sunglint from liquid seas.
Saturn's moon
Titan has numerous smooth
lakes of methane that, when the angle is right,
reflect sunlight as if they were mirrors.
Pictured here in false-color, the
robotic Cassini spacecraft
orbiting Saturn imaged the
cloud-covered Titan last summer in different bands of cloud-piercing
infrared light.
This
specular reflection was so bright it saturated one of Cassini's infrared cameras.
Although the sunglint was annoying -- it was also useful.
The reflecting regions confirm that
northern Titan houses a wide and complex array of seas with a geometry that
indicates periods of significant evaporation.
During its numerous passes of our Solar System's most mysterious moon,
Cassini has revealed Titan to be a world with
active weather -- including times when it rains a liquefied version of
natural gas.