image captured by NASA’s Cassini
Madrid. (EP). – International Cassini mission offers a image in false color Ligeia Mare , the second mass of liquid Titan , which has an area of ??420 x 350 km and over 3,000 km of coastline.
is filled with liquid hydrocarbons, principally ethane and methane, and is one of the many seas and lakes that dot the northern polar region of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.
In this image we can distinguish several rivers flowing into the sea. Cassini have not observed waves on the surface of Ligeia Mare , a large number of scientists think that the winds are not yet strong enough to lift these latitudes waves, but is expected to intensify to As Titan’s northern hemisphere approaches its summer solstice in 2017.
During the approach of the probe to Titan last May 23, Cassini instruments took data that will accurately measure the surface roughness of Ligeia Mare . This mosaic is a composite of images taken by Synthetic Aperture Radar during successive approximations Cassini probe to Titan between February 2006 and April 2007.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) of Cassini works by sending pulses to the surface of Titan and analyzing the returning echoes the instrument function of time and frequency, allowing you to generate an image of the surface.
received echo intensity depends on the roughness, structure and composition of the soil. Smooth surfaces, like the surface of Ligeia Mare, reflect most of the energy in the opposite direction to the satellite and appear in dark tones. In contrast, rough surfaces scatter signal and a considerable fraction makes it back to the satellite.
In this false-color image, the rough surfaces are shown in shades ranging from yellow to white. How radar works at a single frequency, the images obtained with this technique does not contain information about the actual color of the surface. The radar can see through the dense atmosphere of Titan’s surface hidden in the bands of infrared and visible light.
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