The most detailed map of Titan's surface has been compiled - it has shown that the seas and largest lakes of the moon of Saturn are connected by a network hidden under the surface and can support the general "sea level".
A little more than 10 years have passed since the Cassini probe began to explore the Saturn system, but our ideas about it have changed dramatically. Today we know that the largest satellite of Saturn is an extremely peculiar "twin" of the Earth. In the entire solar system, only we and Titan have real seas and rivers flow, there is evaporation from the surface, precipitation falls - in a word, there is a full-fledged fluid cycle.
On the other hand, Titan is much colder, and the role of our water is played by liquid hydrocarbons at this temperature - mainly methane flowing between the "asphalt shores". In the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters, two articles have been published at once, revealing new details of the life of this wonderful world, so similar and unlike ours.
In the first article, Alex Hayes and colleagues at Cornell University summed up the "topographic" observations of Cassini, which was completed in September 2017, and presented the most complete and detailed map of Titan's surface available to date. There are still some “foggy”, insufficiently considered areas, and even “white spots” on it, but on the whole it is completed. Among other things, scientists pointed to a number of previously unknown mountains (Titan is much "flatter" than the Earth, therefore the height of the largest of them does not exceed 700 m) and lowlands - traces of cryovolcanic activity.
New Titan Map / & copy; NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASI / USGS
In another publication, Hayes and co-authors relied on this topographic data, showing that the three largest seas of Titan - the Kraken, Ligeia and Punga seas - are connected to each other and maintain a common "sea level", as is the case with, say, the Pacific and Atlantic oceans on the ground. At the same time, shallow lakes are often several hundred meters higher, which is also similar to our planet.
“We have measured the height of the water surface of a celestial body located 930 million miles from the Sun (1.5 billion km - NS) with an accuracy of about 40 cm,” sums up Alex Hayes. “Thanks to this amazing accuracy, we were able to see that sea level changes smoothly within 11 meters, in line with changes in gravity.”
Indeed, the gravitational field of the satellite, like that of other large bodies, is not uniform, its work is strongly influenced by the attraction of a neighboring planet. The liquid on Titan is distributed under the combined action of these forces: in the largest, closely connected reservoirs, it diverges in an "even layer", without sharp drops, and the lower reservoirs are completely filled.
Promotional video:
It remains to find out another riddle - how exactly is this connection organized? Apparently, the seas and lakes of Titan are connected by some kind of subsurface networks and reservoirs, but to find out completely, you will have to send a new mission to its surface.
Sergey Vasiliev
