Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Dec 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufm.p31c1545c&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #P31C-1545
Mathematics
Logic
[5419] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Hydrology And Fluvial Processes, [5462] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Polar Regions, [5464] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Remote Sensing, [6281] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Titan
Scientific paper
In June 2004 and July 2005, the ISS multispectral camera onboard the Cassini spacecraft imaged a 235 km-long and 75 km-wide dark feature near the south pole of Titan (McEwen et al., 2005). By comparison with other landforms observed near Titan’s north pole with the Radar instrument (Stofan et al., 2007), this feature has been interpreted as an hydrocarbon lake and named Ontario Lacus. Other observations of the lake, by the VIMS hyperspectral camera in December 2007 and the Radar altimeter in December 2008 are consistent with a liquid filled lake (Brown et al., 2008, Barnes et al., 2009), which lies in an extremely flat depression (Lorenz et al., 2009). In March 2009, VIMS acquired new hyperspectral cubes with a spatial resolution similar to the first ones. Finally, the new Radar observations in SAR mode in June and July 2009, 3 months after the VIMS observation, provided the first spatially resolved images of the lake. By merging all these data sets, we performed an integrated geomorphological and compositional study of Ontario Lacus and its surroundings. Comparisons with optical and radar satellite images of analogous landforms in the Etosha Basin, a semi-arid region of Namibia, allowed us to produce an interpretative geological map of Ontario Lacus in 2009. We also checked for potential surface changes of the lake between 2005 and 2009, i.e. during the austral summer and autumn. To achieve this work, we developed a new empirical processing method to remove atmospheric effects in VIMS images and to improve the surface mapping. This correction pipeline is also applied to ISS images. Our interpretative geological map shows that the lake is surrounded mostly by flat plains, except in the North where mountains are present (rough areas with dendritic valleys and triangular facets in the SAR images). The typical radar-dark signature of liquids is present over half the surface area of the lake only. Channels draining the plains SW of Ontario Lacus can be followed on the lake floor on the Radar images. This suggests that the lake floor, most probably composed of (perhaps soggy) sediment, is not covered by significant amounts of liquids over its whole surface. A set of lines curving along the eastern shoreline of the lake can be interpreted, by analogy with similar landforms observed in Namibia and other semi-arid areas on Earth, as “lunette-dunes”, which form by accumulation at downwind lake shorelines, of fine sediments provided by wind deflation of exposed and desiccated lake floors. This unit can be reconciled with 5µm-bright areas in the VIMS images. Alternatively, this set of lines may be interpreted as a series of ancient shorelines, which would indicate past episodes of lake high-stands. If this interpretation is correct, it means that Ontario Lacus has been subject to drying episodes in the past. Finally, at the spatial resolution of ISS and VIMS, we observe no significant change of the lake contour between 2005 and 2009 in the common part of the lake.
Baines Kevin Hays
Barnes Jason W.
Bourgeois Olivier
Brown Harvey R.
Buratti Bonnie Jean
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