Editor's Summary
4 August 2005
Titanic oceans
With the Cassini probe still sending data back from the saturnian system, and following the recent descent of the Huygens probe to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan, West et al. tackle the unresolved issue of possible liquid surfaces on Titan. Following the Voyager flybys in the 1980s, computer modelling of the atmosphere suggested that there was sufficient liquid methane, ethane and nitrogen present for a deep liquid layer. Earth-based radar echoes also pointed to the presence of liquids. But now ground-based observations of Titan's reflectivity at near-infrared wavelengths, together with radar observations, show pretty conclusively that there are no oceans present on Titan today. There are some very flat solid surfaces however, a possible indication of the presence of liquids in the past.
Letter: No oceans on Titan from the absence of a near-infrared specular reflection
R. A. West, M. E. Brown, S. V. Salinas, A. H. Bouchez and H. G. Roe
doi:10.1038/nature03824