NASA's Cassini Unveils Images of Saturn and its Moon Titan's Methane Lakes

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed some new images of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, unveiling the presence of liquid methane and ethane lakes on it near its north pole . The spacecraft also captured some latest images of Saturn and its rings from the top.

The team of scientists from NASA researchers  from the University of Idaho were the one to spot the new images.

The images were released by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge earlier this week. The pictures were captured with the help of the spacecraft's infrared mapping spectrometer and were false-colored mosaics.

"The view from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer gives us a holistic view of an area that we'd only seen in bits and pieces before and at lower resolution," Jason Barnes, a participating scientist at the University of Idaho, Moscow, stated in a press release.

"It turns out that Titan's north pole is even more interesting than we thought, with a complex interplay of liquids in lakes and seas and deposits left from the evaporation of past lakes and seas," Barnes added.

Changes in the weather and some alterations in the positioning proved lucky and the spacecraft was able to snap photos of the liquid methane and ethane lakes in Titan's north pole.

The images give hints about the formation of these methane and ethane lakes on Titan, and its Earth-like water cycle, which comprises of hydrocarbons instead of water.

"Titan's northern lakes region is one of the most Earth-like and intriguing in the solar system," said Linda Spilker, the Cassini project scientist based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"We know lakes here change with the seasons and Cassini's long mission at Saturn gives us the opportunity to watch the seasons change at Titan, too. Now that the sun is shining in the north and we have these wonderful views, we can begin to compare the different data sets and tease out what Titan's lakes are doing near the north pole," Spilker added.

Cassini also captured some new images of Saturn from the top disclosing the golden-hued planet along with its main rings, which were illuminated by the Sun.

Cassini was launched in 1997 and it has been examining the ringed planet, Saturn, and its surroundings since 2004. Saturn completes its revolution in 30 years and Cassini has analyzed about one-third of a Saturn year so far. Northern seasonal changes of Saturn and its moons were observed by the spacecraft.