Meet the Kraken: Hydrocarbon seas spotted at Titan’s north pole

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/USGS

The joint NASA-ESA Cassini space probe, exploring Saturn and its moons, has revealed extraordinary lakes and seas of liquid methane around the north pole of Saturnian moon Titan. Scientists associated with the Cassini mission described a strange rectangular area of large seas, picked out by imaging instruments aboard the probe.

Elongated lakes and narrow channels linking two large seas are apparent in the new image. It’s reminiscent of the topographic depressions in the basin and range region of the western US. Those are shaped by the movements of tectonic plates on America’s fringe, which suggests that the large lakes seen on Titan may be shaped by tectonic forces.

“Scientists have been wondering why Titan’s lakes are where they are. These images show us that the bedrock and geology must be creating a particularly inviting environment for lakes,” said Randolph Kirk, part of the Cassini RADAR team and based at the US Geological Survey. “We think it may be something like the formation of the prehistoric lake called Lake Lahontan near Lake Tahoe in Nevada and California, where deformation of the crust created fissures that could be filled up with liquid.”