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NASA's Cassini Captures the Glint of Sunlight in Titan's Polar Seas

Saturn's moon holds its title as the most beguiling chunk of rock in the Solar System.
Image: NASA/JPL

Saturn's moon Titan is the only other place in the Solar System that's home to liquid oceans on its surface, at least that we know of. These bodies are not made up of water, alas, but rather liquid ethane and methane. Astronomers call them hydrocarbon lakes. Long theorized, Titan's lakes were finally confirmed by images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft revealing their "specular reflections."

Related: What the hell is this thing materializing in Titan's ocean?

Cassini, which has been exploring (collecting data on) the Saturnian system since 2004, captured the images in the composite above as well. The reflection seen was powerful enough to not only cut through the moon's thick haze, but to completely saturate the spacecraft's Infrared Mapping Spectrometer instrument.

Image: NASA/JPL

"The view contains real color information, although it is not the natural color the human eye would see," a nasa.gov announcement explains. "Here, red in the image corresponds to 5.0 microns, green to 2.0 microns, and blue to 1.3 microns. These wavelengths correspond to atmospheric windows through which Titan's surface is visible. The unaided human eye would see nothing but haze, as in PIA12528."