Radar shows Titan's methane lakes
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Lakes of methane could cover three-quarters of Saturn's moon Titan, according to radio echoes from the cloud-covered world. If so, the European Space Agency's Huygens spaceprobe might be facing a splashdown when it parachutes to the moon's surface in January 2005, New Scientist reported Thursday. Astronomers have suspected since the Voyager flybys of the 1980s liquid hydrocarbons were present on Titan's surface, and radar observations taken when Saturn made close approaches to Earth in 2001 and 2002 provided strong evidence of methane lakes. And now Donald Campbell of New York's Cornell University and colleagues have used the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico as an interplanetary radar to bounce hundreds of kilowatts of microwaves off Titan. They listened for the faint echo and analyzed the results. In three-quarters of their observations they received a component reflected from a flat surface on the moon, such as an ice sheet or an undisturbed pool of liquid, New Scientist said.
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Lakes of methane could cover three-quarters of Saturn's moon Titan, according to radio echoes from the cloud-covered world. If so, the European Space Agency's Huygens spaceprobe might be facing a splashdown when it parachutes to the moon's surface in January 2005, New Scientist reported Thursday. Astronomers have suspected since the Voyager flybys of the 1980s liquid hydrocarbons were present on Titan's surface, and radar observations taken when Saturn made close approaches to Earth in 2001 and 2002 provided strong evidence of methane lakes. And now Donald Campbell of New York's Cornell University and colleagues have used the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico as an interplanetary radar to bounce hundreds of kilowatts of microwaves off Titan. They listened for the faint echo and analyzed the results. In three-quarters of their observations they received a component reflected from a flat surface on the moon, such as an ice sheet or an undisturbed pool of liquid, New Scientist said.
Charles Mims
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