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File:PIA09184 -Titan Sea and Lake Superior.jpg

PIA09184_-Titan_Sea_and_Lake_Superior.jpg ‎(604 × 357 pixels, file size: 36 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Summary

Description This side-by-side image shows a Cassini radar image (on the left) of en:Ligeia Mare, compared to Lake Superior (on the right). This close-up is part of a larger image (see PIA09182) and offers strong evidence for seas on Titan. These seas are most likely liquid methane and ethane.

This feature on Titan is at least 100,000 square kilometers (39,000 square miles), which is greater in extent than Lake Superior (82,000 square kilometers or 32,000 square miles), which is one of Earth's largest lakes. The feature covers a greater fraction of Titan than the largest terrestrial inland sea, the Black Sea. The Black Sea covers 0.085 percent of the surface of the Earth; this newly observed body on Titan covers at least 0.12 percent of the surface of Titan. Because of its size, scientists are calling it a sea.

The image on the right is from the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) project, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, Greenbelt, Md.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
Date 13 March 2007
Source http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09184
Author NASA / JPL / GSFC
Shuttle.svg This image or video was catalogued by Jet Propulsion Lab of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under Photo ID: PIA09184.
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Licensing

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