6 Nov 2004 @ 17:57, by Anthony Marsh
A moon of Saturn, Titan lacking obvious craters, has terrain alot like the area surounding Flagstaff Arizona, by the looks of the most recent pictures from the Cassini-Huygens mission of Titan. Soon NASA/JPL/ESA will drop a probe onto its surface, and sample Titans atmosphere, and maybe survive the impact and send surface information for about another 30 minets or till the batteries run out.
What I found most intresting are the pictures so far of the moon. I go to terraserver.com alot, and see all sorts of arial pictures of the Earths surface, forests canyons and mountains, deserts, etc..., and I look at these pictures from Saturn and wonder.... are those trees on Titan, covering those hills or just cold rocks? The scientists say the place is so cold that there might be pools and lakes of liquid methane but I look at these pictures, and I get the feeling its not as cold as they say, lack of obviouse craters tells me that the surface of Titan is extreemly active like it is here on Earth. Heat must be being generated from inside the moon since I would expect to see at least some icy frost on high ground. Assuming, that is, scientists accually know what the cameras are seeing as to altitude of the terraine, but according to them, they don't know yet what they are seeing. Just going to have to wait for more data, from the drop probe, lol.
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