Evidence for Past Lake-Level Change in Titan's Ontario Lacus

Details Evidence for Past Lake-Level Change in Titan's Ontario Lacus Evidence for Past Lake-Level Change in Titan's Ontario Lacus

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dps....40.2308b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #23.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.429

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Cassini Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) observations of Titan's south-polar lake Ontario Lacus obtained during the T38 (2008 December 7) encounter represent the finest spatial resolution, highest signal to noise ratio, and least atmospheric component of any near-infrared lake data to date. These data have recently confirmed the liquid nature of Titan's putative lakes (Brown et al. 2008 July, _Nature_). Here we investigate the geomorphology of the lake's shoreline using the VIMS T38 data, with Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) observations for context. We find that the dark, liquid interior of Ontario Lacus is surrounded by two brighter annuli. The inner annulus is dark, though not so much as the lake's core, varies between 5 and 10 km in width, and may comprise wet lakebed sediments exposed by seasonal lowering of the lake level. The outer annulus is brighter and free of water ice, according to the spectral signature. The width of the outer annulus varies from several hundred meters to 20 km. The nature of these bright deposits is not clear, but they may indicate fine-grained organic condensates deposited during an earlier era of higher lake level. We will discuss the dataset and image processing, along with various hypotheses for formation of the annuli, concluding with the implications of our interpretations for Titan's methane cycle and future Cassini observations.

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