An Alien Sea on a Moon of Saturn's

I want to introduce you today to Ligeia Mare (the Ligeian Sea), the second largest known body of liquid outside the Earth. It's on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan, the only moon in the solar system to have a thick atmosphere and, therefore, to have air pressure. It's air pressure that keeps liquids from evaporating and makes rivers, lakes, and seas possible.

And to our delight, Titan, despite the freezing cold temperatures in the Saturn System, has rivers, lakes, and seas. At Titan temperatures, water is frozen until it's harder than rock on Earth. So the bodies of liquid on Titan are not water, but methane and ethane, which can be liquid under Titan conditions. Methane is natural gas (and also what comes out of both ends of the cow after it has been digesting its food for a while.) Ethane is a chemical that is often found in natural gas and is also a product of refining oil.

Take a look at the picture. This is not a photograph, but an image that comes from bouncing radar beams off Titan, something we equipped our clever little Cassini spacecraft to do. On radar pictures, rough things show up light, smooth things (like bodies of liquid) show up dark. The colors are added artificially to make the picture more interesting.

The name Ligeia comes from one of the sirens of Greek mythology, beautiful creatures who lured sailors toward rocky shores and their certain death. Look at Ligeia on the image -- ain't she beautiful? Some people see the shape of a sleeping dog, with its head toward the bottom. But its size is what astounds. The sea is about the size of the Earth's Caspian sea and if you walked completely around it on the shore, you'd walk a total of 1,240 miles.

Where the radar picture is black, the sea is deep; where you see grey, the sea is more shallow, so the radar beam can hit the sea bottom and some of it bounces back. Already scientists have proposed a mission (not approved yet) to splash down a capsule in Ligeia Mare and either drift or purposely navigate around the sea, sending back images to Earth.

It's been winter in the North polar region of Titan since Cassini arrived in the neighborhood. Some scientists think that once the weather starts to warm up on Titan (it will still be outrageously cold compared to Earth,) the Titan winds might blow hard enough to make waves on this alien sea, and our radar might just pick up those waves. (Somebody should tell the Beach Boys that surf might soon be up another world!)

For more details about weather on Titan, see:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20130522.html#.UjEPocYqh8E