In bad news for any intergalactic surfers, international scientists say the seas of Saturn’s largest moon Titan have very tiny waves only a few millimeters high, and there may also be rips to look out for – the team found evidence of tidal currents. The scientists analysed data from the Cassini spacecraft which collected radar observations between 2014 and 2016, and found that the methane and ethane-rich seas of Titan are mostly completely flat, but there’s evidence of small surface waves up to only a few millimetres high. The tidal currents the team detected are caused by methane-rich rivers flowing into ethane-rich seas, they say.
Journal/conference: Nature Communications
Link to research (DOI): 10.1038/s41467-024-49837-2
Organisation/s: Cornell University, USA
Funder: V.P., A.G.H., D.E.L., and S.M. acknowledge support from NASA CDAP
grant NNH21ZDA001N-CDAP. G.B., M.Z., and P.T. acknowledge financial
support from the Italian Space Agency through Agreement 2023-6-
HH.0, in the context of ESA’s JUICE mission.
Media release
From: Springer Nature
Investigating Titan’s seasInsights into the composition and roughness of seas located on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, are revealed in a Nature Communications paper. The findings suggest that the liquid hydrocarbon seas — named Kraken, Ligeia and Punga Mare — may have different compositions, active tidal currents, small-scale waves, and increased roughness near estuaries and inter-basin straits.Titan’s landscape is marked by large dune fields, flat plains, and polar regions with large seas and lakes of liquid hydrocarbons. The exploration of Titan by the Cassini spacecraft has provided insights into its complex and Earth-like hydrologic system, dominated by methane rather than water. Whilst Cassini has revealed a lot about this moon, its radar observations could only provide limited information about Titan’s liquid seas, and questions remain about their properties.To investigate how Titan’s seas and atmosphere interact, Valerio Poggiali and colleagues analysed Cassini mission bistatic radar data of Titan’s polar seas, collected between 2014–2016. At the time of the bistatic observations, the main bodies of Ligeia, Punga Mare and Kraken were mostly level, with no major disruptions to the surface. They found variations in the liquid composition between the different seas, consistent with differences in the methane-ethane mixing-ratio. The data relating to estuaries suggest that methane-rich rivers may have lower ethane levels compared to the open seas. The authors estimate small-scale roughness (of a few millimetres) from scattering on the sea surface, hinting at the presence of small surface waves. A higher level of roughness was concentrated in coastal areas near estuaries and inter-basin straits, perhaps indicating active tidal currents.The findings improve our understanding of the composition and surface properties of Titan’s seas.