Images from NASA's Cassini probe revealed vast lakes of liquid hydrocarbons around the poles of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, in 2006. Elizabeth Turtle of Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and her colleagues now add the discovery that methane probably rains on Titan at low equatorial latitudes.
Images of the arid equatorial region taken by Cassini last October show dunes that appear darker after clouds had passed overhead. This suggests that the clouds rained liquid methane, which wet the surface, says the team. Such rain is thought to be seasonal and may play a part in dune formation by cementing fine atmospheric aerosol particles.
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Methane rain falls on Titan. Nature 471, 413 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/471413a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/471413a
