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NASA's Cassini spacecraft is still gathering data that is yielding new scientific discoveries nearly 10 years after it began its mission. The team of scientists in charge of the mission have chosen the 10 most interesting revelations they made in 2013, and it's an impressive list.
We'll start with this beautiful mosaic map of the northern hemisphere of Saturn’s moon Titan, which is full of rivers, lakes, and seas.
Titan’s lakes and seas are filled not with water but rather with hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane, which are typically gases on Earth but remain liquid at Titan’s average temperature of −180 degrees Celsius. Ever since Cassini started radar mapping the frozen moon in 2004, researchers have seen that Titan is a weird and wet world. But Cassini’s scans missed the true extent of some seas, including the biggest, Kraken Mare.
This new map fills in almost all the area of Titan’s north pole and provides scientists with important answers to some of their questions. Using the radar data, scientists also discovered that the moon's second largest sea, Ligeia Mare, is around 560 feet deep.
Read more.
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
