Titan has Ethane clouds snowing on Methane lakes

The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer on NASA's Cassini spacecraft recorded these infrared images of Titan's northern hemisphere.

"We think that ethane is raining or, if temperatures are cool enough, snowing on the north pole right now," Caitlin Griffith said.

"Our observations imply that surface deposits of ethane should be found specifically at the poles, rather than globally distributed across Titan's disk as previously assumed," she added. "That may partially explain the lack of liquid ethane oceans and clouds at Titan's middle and lower latitudes."

The images show the reflection of sunlight on Titan's atmosphere at 2.8 microns, longer wavelengths than human eyes can detect. The image appears in false color so that the highest reflection appears as a reddish hue. The vast ethane cloud can be seen in all images as a reddish band just north of 50 degrees latitude. The top of the image in panel D also shows a strong reflection off the limb of the planet (also reddish), which is caused by the lighting angle and does not indicate the presence of clouds.

Image (A) was taken on Dec. 13, 2004; image (B) on Aug. 22, 2005; image (C) on Aug. 21, 2005; and image (D) on Sept. 7, 2005.

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Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona