A new RADAR image of a portion of Titan's "Caspian Sea" was just publically released:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09211

I have to say, this is an incredible view. The first thing I though of was how much it looked like the coastline in the Pacific Northwest.

Sweet! That's some truly radar dark stuff, the sea ought to be pretty darn deep at least in this view. Practically no RADAR backscatter, apart from instrument noise.

I must beg to differ. The pacific northwest is a typical ex-glaciated fjord coast. This looks much more like a ria coastline where rising sealevels has invaded a flattish landscape with a subdued drainage pattern. The coast of Virginia and North Carolina minus the barrier islands would in me opinion be a better parallell. In any case there is probably not enough energy to form barrier islands on Titan.

While geologically the eastern coast of the US may provide a better analog, I think the coast in the Pacific Northwest provides a better visual analog, given the sharper topography.

That is just jaw droppingly good.

Beautiful! I am amazed at how rugged the coastline and islands appear! Total Fractal-land!

Wave erosion must be minimal to keep the margin looking so sharp. Or else we are seeing a landscape that is more flooded than normal.

Here are some interesting landscape comparisions on Earth:

Dalmatian coast : 43 degrees 52' N, 15 degrees 13' E
Turkish coast: 37 degrees 15' N, 27 degrees 32; E
Serifos Island (Greece - a good example of a fractal island): 37 degrees 10' N, 24 degrees 28' E

(Google Earth Scavenger hunt! Can anyone find a perfect match for the landscape around the lakes or islands?)

-Mike

Too right, Doug...I think that RADAR might be the best possible focus of the extended mission after all...

Tty, I share VP's opinion on my first impression here...first thing I thought of was the British Columbian/southeast Alaskan coastline. Your mechanism sounds a lot more plausible, though, given the fact that the West Coast of North America is very tectonically active in addition to the previous glaciation. The only thing I'm uncertain about is erosion rates.

The Carolina coast has relatively gentle contours because there is a relatively low level of tectonic activity, so wind, rain, and the ocean have smoothed things out faster than new rough topographic features can form.

Given all that, how can we reconcile this image with possible Titanian erosion rates? (I'm definitely not ready to postulate tectonics or glaciers of some bizarre composition here, and the rest of the moon makes me think that erosion moves pretty fast most places...)

Wow, that has to be one of the most impressive titan picture yet! Does anyone know where this fits in compared to earlier images of this sea?
Edit: Oh, i see there is a map in an other thread. The "Caspian sea" is really huge!

See here for an approximate location.

Another potential Earth Analog: Near Uwajima (JP): 33 degrees 11' N; 133 degrees 30' E.

Fractal coastline, (steep mountain valleys plunging into the sea), little coastal smoothing (protected waters - little or no wave action). [I dont think glaciers affected this landscape, no long straight bores done by an advancing river of ice.]

If these analogies are correct, I'll wager that the corresponding seashore on Titan is pretty steep!
(The Coastal Plain of the Carolinas is "flat as a flyswatter").

-Mike

Indeed very similar.
Google map link

That's absolutely fantastic, and it gives me a totally crazy idea. There's been a lot of talk about sending a balloon to Titan and having it drift around getting sub-cloud images of the landscape, obviously covering a lot more area than even a wheeled rover could.

But would it be possible to drop a floating probe into one of these lakes, and have it sail, or at least drift -- covering a good deal of area, and (hopefully) getting a good view of the coasts? It would be nice to have it be able to crawl up on land (or at least push off from it) if it fetched up on an island, but that's perhaps too much to ask. Still, I think it would be very cool if the liquid regions of Titan could be utilized for getting around much larger portions of the moon's surface than a land vehicle could hope to do.

Just two words:
Purgatory Reef

It would be pretty cool to be stuck for a short while in a reef if it's coral.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the names that will be applied to the lakes, seas, and islands of this region as mapping improves over the course of the extended mission(s). This is geography we can quickly identify with, and a treasure trove of terrestrial lake names are waiting to be attached to these features...will the seas be called "Mare"? What of the islands? "Facula" need not apply here.

-Droppin' bank in the swear jar, yo. Klink.

On the shape of the coastline and islands:

Little pointy triangles seem to be one recurrent theme. That suggests sub-aerial erosion by rainfall. The lack of beach-like erosion features parallel to the shores could be an indication that the liquid level is quite variable.

Well, we've already got one named after Lake Ontario. They may decide to go with Caspian Sea as the name of the biggest sea.

Magnificent image--a marvelous illustration of the universality of basic physical and geological processes. Just look at those islands and ridges! Then again, I have a weakness for waterfront--uh, eh, hydrocarbonfront--property.

Titan and Europa are now deep into a heavyweight match in my brain...

Ethodynamics?

We have to stay weary of other possiblilities: The lack of the signature of beachheads means the cracks and fractures might be cracks and fractures. It was the uplifting of a sea floor that created The Maze in Canyonlands, not water drainages. The more altimetery we get on these specific features, the better.

No, that word references the dynamics of ethical systems. Athodynamics references the dynamics of one of the Three Musketeers...



I think the proper term would be ethanodynamics.

-the other Doug

So what could the reason be for most of data from the most recent and probably more interesting radar passes not making it into the public domain - the first "lake search" flybys occurred 4 or 5 months ago. These flybys were widely promoted on the Cassini homepage.. so it just seems odd - maybe they found something especially interesting.

Also, can anyone else access the image link in the first post any more? Not working here.

I sent a question about the data to the RADAR team a couple of weeks ago, and the simple answer is that they haven't had time; they're drowning in data because they've had so many flybys back-to-back. Also, Steve Wall told me that he wasn't quite happy enough with the images yet to release them. They have to produce extremely precise descriptions of Cassini's course past Titan to make the SAR images from the RADAR data, and tiny tiny errors can fill the images with bands and toothy artifacts. He did tell me that at some point he was going to give up trying to make it better and just release some images; clearly he hasn't reached that point yet. They've got plenty of data, and it's great data, but knowing that the images will live forever on the Internet once they're posted, they're just trying to make sure they're happy of the quality before they're released.

--Emily

Thanks for asking the question, Emily. Sounds like there are some interesting times ahead...but understand their concerns.

There must be a face on Titan. Cydonia II.

Did something not go quite right during the SAR flyby?

They SAR passes T28,29,30 went fine (next SAR T36) Lots of good SAR
and altimetry, but generating good products takes time, and the raw
images can be subject to misinterpretation

Everything was totally fine. Having worked a lot with Magellan SAR, I can tell you that with a good reconstruction of the flyby geometry you can get SAR images that are perfectly good enough for science. However, there can be a lot of artifacts from even the tiniest imprecision in the reconstruction of the spacecraft's position, and I can understand if the RADAR team would rather spend more time now trying to work out those artifacts than time later having to explain over and over again, "no, that's not a feature, that's an artifact" and "no, there's nothing wrong with our system, SAR is just hard to do" and "really, honestly, there's nothing wrong with the spacecraft, that's just an artifact." Give them time to make it look good.

--Emily