* Astronomy

Cassini observes seasonal changes on Saturn's moon
Disappearing lakes evaporate away from Saturn's moon, Titan, reveals NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Cloud-piercing radar images of the haze-covered moon, presented Tuesday in a pair of studies by Alex Hayes of the California Institute of Technology and Jonathan Lunine of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, show methane lakes growing and shrinking in recent years in the moon's South Pole region, where temperatures range around -190 degrees Fahrenheit.

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Global view of valleys on Titan show North-South divide
A team of international scientists led by Mirjam Langhans, from the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), will present first results of a global analysis of spatial patterns, occurrence and origin of river channels on Titan at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany, on Wednesday 16 September.
To date scientists have focused their investigations on single channels due to the fact that radar and spectral data have only been captured for some narrow areas of the surface below the thick nitrogen atmosphere of this mysterious moon of Saturn. This data jigsaw puzzle is increasingly being filled in through further fly bys of Titan by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Now, for the first time, the DLR team has developed a global perspective of the deposits of liquid hydrocarbons, such as methane and ethane, and their effected forms of erosion.
Beside the Earth, Titan is the only body in the Solar System where liquids directly have been proved to exist. The moon's exceptionally thick atmosphere, where chemical reactions occur at freezing temperatures of -179 degrees Celsius, makes this second largest moon of the Solar System of special interest for planetary science.
The DLR scientists have compiled a global map of Titan, which combines all radar data and details the surface of Titan down to 300 meters in size. Furthermore, data in near infrared wavelengths have been captured for a wide band around the equator by Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) with a resolution of up to 300 meters per pixel.
On this equatorial band, bright continent areas and extensive dune regions can be distinguished. Dark spots on the continent areas are of special interest, because they are supposed to be fluvial deposits. Additional radar data show channels precisely linked to them, which are dry, canyon-like, and broadly distributed.
Towards the north pole, the picture is much richer. There is a dense network of branching, active river systems similar to those on Earth. They are visible down to small tributaries on radar images and can be seen flowing into multiple lakes. Contrastingly, hardly any channels are found at the south pole.

"The observations of the extensive river structures at the north pole have led the team to a fascinating conclusion: there must be heavy and frequent rain of liquid hydrocarbons. Furthermore the measured channels provide first clues about the composition and relative age of different regions of Titan" - Mirjam Langhans.

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Exploring A Moon By Boat
The first nautical exploration of an extraterrestrial sea could come as soon as 2022, if a team of researchers can convince NASA to try sailing a boat on an alien world.

"The overwhelming reaction I get from scientists and engineers is, 'Oh, that's really cool.' I mean, people are just instantly kind of excited and intrigued to say, 'Could we really go do this?' " - Ellen Stofan, a planetary geologist at Proxemy Research in Maryland and an honorary professor at University College London.

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UH Manoa team unravels the chemistry of Titan's hazy atmosphere
A team of University of Hawai'i at Mnoa researchers led by Ralf Kaiser, physical chemist at UH Manoa, unravelled the chemical evolution of the orange-brownish coloured atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan, the only solar system body besides Venus and Earth with a solid surface and thick atmosphere. The UH Manoa team, including Xibin Gu and Seol Kim, conducted simulation experiments mimicking the chemical reactions in Titan's atmosphere utilising crossed molecular beams in which the consequence of a single collision between molecules can be followed.

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