The root of anomalously specular reflections from solid surfaces on Saturn’s moon Titan

The root of anomalously specular reflections from solid surfaces on Saturn’s moon Titan

Saturn’s moon Titan has a methane cycle with clouds, rain, rivers, lakes, and seas; it is the only world known to presently have a volatile cycle akin to Earth’s tropospheric water cycle. Anomalously specular radar reflections (ASRR) from Titan’s tropical region were observed with the Arecibo Observ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications Vol. 11; no. 1; p. 2829
Main Authors: Hofgartner, Jason D., Hayes, Alexander G., Campbell, Donald B., Lunine, Jonathan I., Black, Gregory J., MacKenzie, Shannon M., Birch, Samuel P. D., Elachi, Charles, Kirk, Randolph D., Le Gall, Alice, Lorenz, Ralph D., Wall, Stephen D.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 16-06-2020
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Subjects:
639/33/445
639/33/445/215
639/33/445/242
Cassini mission
Clouds
Humanities and Social Sciences
Hydrologic cycle
Lakes
Liquid surfaces
Moon
multidisciplinary
Oceans
Radar
Saturn
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Sciences of the Universe
Solid surfaces
Spacecraft
Terrain
Titan
Tropical environment
Tropical environments
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Summary:Saturn’s moon Titan has a methane cycle with clouds, rain, rivers, lakes, and seas; it is the only world known to presently have a volatile cycle akin to Earth’s tropospheric water cycle. Anomalously specular radar reflections (ASRR) from Titan’s tropical region were observed with the Arecibo Observatory (AO) and Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and interpreted as evidence for liquid surfaces. The Cassini spacecraft discovered lakes/seas on Titan, however, it did not observe lakes/seas at the AO/GBT anomalously specular locations. A satisfactory explanation for the ASRR has been elusive for more than a decade. Here we show that the ASRR originate from one terrain unit, likely paleolakes/paleoseas. Titan observations provide ground-truth in the search for oceans on exoearths and an important lesson is that identifying liquid surfaces by specular reflections requires a stringent definition of specular; we propose a definition for this purpose. Anomalously specular radar reflections (ASRR) from Titan’s tropical region were interpreted earlier as evidence for liquid surfaces, but the Cassini spacecraft did not observe lakes/seas at the anomalously specular locations. Here, the authors show that ASRR originate from one terrain unit, likely paleolakes/paleoseas.
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ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-020-16663-1