"Seas" of Titan are sand UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA NEWS RELEASE
Posted: May 5, 2006 Until a couple of years ago, scientists
thought the dark equatorial regions of Titan might be liquid
oceans. New radar evidence shows they are seas -- but seas of
sand dunes like those in the Arabian or Namibian Deserts, a
University of Arizona member of the Cassini radar team and
colleagues report in Science (May 5). Radar images taken when
the Cassini spacecraft flew by Titan last October show dunes 330
feet (100 meters) high that run parallel to each other for
hundreds of miles at Titan's equator. One dune field runs more
than 930 miles (1500 km) long, said Ralph Lorenz of UA's Lunar
and Planetary Laboratory. "It's bizarre," Lorenz said. "These
images from a moon of Saturn look just like radar images of
Namibia or Arabia. Titan's atmosphere is thicker than Earth's,
its gravity is lower, its sand is certainly different --
everything is different except for the physical process that
forms the dunes and resulting landscape." Ten y