NASAのインスタグラム(nasa) - 10月24日 08時47分

Are there salt flats on Titan? This false-color mosaic, made from infrared data collected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, reveals the differences in the composition of surface materials around hydrocarbon lakes at Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Titan is the only other place in the solar system that we know has stable liquid on its surface, though its lakes are made of liquid ethane and methane rather than liquid water. While there is one large lake and a few smaller ones near Titan's south pole, almost all of Titan's lakes appear near the moon's north pole.

The orange areas are thought to be evaporite -- the Titan equivalent of salt flats on Earth. The evaporated material is thought to be organic chemicals originally from Titan's haze particles that once dissolved in liquid methane. They appear orange in this image against the greenish backdrop of Titan's typical bedrock of water ice.

This image highlights a high-resolution strip and shows the north pole marked with a red cross. Other smaller lakes are also labeled. The data shown here were obtained by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer during a close flyby of Titan on Sept. 12, 2013.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/University of Idaho

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