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Written by spacetravel.org
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Thursday, 09 June 2005 23:04 |
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The Cassini spacecraft has discovered a giant volcano that spews methane on Saturns moon Titan. Cassinis infrared camera has looked through Titans atmosphere and spotted a large, dome-like structure, 30 kilometers across. Christopher Sotin and his colleagues at the University of Nantes in France have analyzed the images and discovered that the dome is an ice volcano produced by a rising plume of hydrocarbon ice. This low-temperature volcanism could be a significant source of the methane in Titans atmosphere.
Before Cassini, the methane in Titans atmosphere was considered to be evidence that there must be oceans of liquid methane to replenish it in the air. However, neither the Cassini orbiter nor the Huygens probe, which landed in Titan in January 2005, saw any reflections from Titans surface that would be typical of liquid surfaces. This virtually ruled out oceans of methane.
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