space porn, astronomy, cassini-huygens, map, moon, satellite, saturn, space, titan...

A Vector Map of the Unnamed Methane Sea on Titan

Peter Minton is a California teacher who loves to make vector maps in his spare time. His favorite places to map are islands and coastlines, and so when the Cassini-Huygens probe sent back images from Saturn's moon Titan he was happy to discover the geographical features he loves most. There, on the pole of Titan, was a sea full of islands. An unnamed methane sea, but still mappable using vectoring software. This is the map he created, with longitude and latitude lines.

Minton, who already created vector maps of the islands in this sea, writes:

I went ahead and digitized the shoreline of the unnamed methane sea . . . It is one of the largest bodies of liquid known to exist on this moon of Saturn. This body of liquid methane, ethane and nitrogen is about the size of Lake Superior.

The intrepid map afficionado at Strange Maps blog adds:

The orange opacity of Titan's atmosphere makes the moon appear bigger than it actually is - astronomers have since distinguished between permanent cloud cover and surface, and downgraded it from the first- to the second-largest moon in our system, after Jupiter's satellite Ganymede.
Not until the flyby, in 2004, of the Cassini-Huygens mission could scientists confirm the speculation, first ignited by both Voyager missions and then heightened by Hubble observations, that Titan is the only heavenly body (save Earth) to contain large liquid surfaces - or seas, as non-astronomers would call them. For they seem a bit too small to be labelled oceans.

These seas, or lakes, most probably consisting of methane or another hydrocarbon, can be seen on this page of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

This sea is one of the few unnamed large bodies of liquid in the solar system. What should we name it?

EVS-Islands [via Strange Maps]

7:00 AM on Thu Mar 27 2008
By Annalee Newitz
3,437 views
21 comments

Comments

cabooyah at 07:14 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

"What do you call the methane lake on Titan?"

"We call that one, Muad'Dib."

"Could I be known as Paul Muad'Dib?"

"Very well. You shall be known as Paul Muad'Dib."
QuasarErazar at 07:23 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

/lol
Thom at 07:31 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

@cabooyah: LMAO
metrophage at 07:36 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

@cabooyah: funny :)
92BuickLeSabre at 07:38 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*
Connectedness Index: 558

@cabooyah: verry niice

Honestly, "Titan's Unnamed Methane Sea" is a pretty cool frickin name as it is.
Mathmos at 07:40 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

Hope I live long enough to get more info about the oceans that seem likely to be under the surfaces of some of Jupiter's and Saturn's moons.
Jeff-Minor at 07:48 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

How about the Stinky Sea? Mare Maloderous.
Klebert L. Hall at 08:06 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

@Jeff-Minor:

Methane is odorless. It's the impurities that make it smelly. I don't know about ethane.
-Kle.
Miranda Kali at 08:07 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*
Connectedness Index: 150

Looking at it, it could easily be a map of any terrestrial mass...I guess it's just seeing an alien land, represented in familiar terms. There's something fascinating about seeing a map of a world you'll never see.
tetracycloide at 08:14 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

i guess the only question left is why a lake on titan would be blue.
papercup mixmaster at 08:36 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

@92BuickLeSabre: That's what I came here to say. Seems like it could be a pretty awesome title of some story or other, "The Unnamed Methane Sea." I'd read that.
Jeff-Minor at 08:40 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

Klebert, I have it on good athority that is smells really bad :( I think it's the sulfer dioxide that bubbles up from the volcanic depths under the ice. Mare Methane, then.
Gopherit at 09:01 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*
Connectedness Index: 202

@tetracycloide: You make'em blue if you want to really convince people your radar flat/smooth areas are liquid. Grant money is at premium.

The dendritic patterns along the "shoreline" are really cool, though. Not too many places you can look in the solar system and confuse with Earth geography.

I vote for Lake Lunine. It seems fair to name the first methane "sea" found on Titan after the scientist whose dissertation was on Titan's ethane/methane oceans.
92BuickLeSabre at 09:49 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*
Connectedness Index: 558

@Gopherit: I like that. It also has the added benefit of slyly referencing our own moon.
goldfarb at 09:58 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

note to fantasy authors...
please use stuff like this for your worlds...
it looks real, it makes sense from a geologic pov etc etc...

I have a huge rant about maps in fantasy books...but I'll spare you.
pirates.happen at 10:38 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

@Gopherit: Speaking of the shoreline, doesn't it look a bit like one of Slartibartfast's creations?
Wesman at 11:21 AM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

The shape looks to me like the head and neck of one of the aliens from the Alien movies. Call it the Ripley Sea.
Grey_Area at 12:07 PM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

I propose "Mare Eurynome". She was a primordial aquatic deity of the Greeks.
[en.wikipedia.org]
there's already an asteroid of that name but she deserves a sea as well.
twreckx at 01:24 PM on 03/27/08
Reply by Email
*

@92BuickLeSabre: Except that the acronym's TUMS. Indigestion and methane oceans on faraway planets don't really suit, methinks.
AnnetteEurystheus at 09:22 AM on 03/28/08
Reply by Email
*

Comment on A Vector Map of the Unnamed Methane Sea on Titan Since Carl was heavily involved in the initial speculation that Titan might have liquid methane on the surface, my proposal is it be called the "Sagan Sea".
JetertoCano at 09:38 AM on 03/28/08
Reply by Email
*

My vote, perhaps as an ode to Marvel Comics' Eternals, is Lake Eternal.