Astronomers have discovered a mysterious and brilliant geological object never seen before in Ligeia Mare , the second largest sea on Titan, the moon of Saturn.
They have detected it thanks to the radar images of the Cassini mission and have named it “Magic Island” . And it is that “now you see it, now you do not see it”, according to the scientists who have participated in the discovery.
This is the first observation of a geological process underway in Titan’s Northern Hemisphere and is proof that the liquid elements in that area are not still but in the process of change, according to Jason Hofgartner, a graduate in planetary sciences from the University Cornell and main author of the work: “We still do not know precisely why this ‘Magic Island’ appears, but we want to study it thoroughly,” he says in the journal Nature Geoscience .
Titan is the largest of Saturn’s 62 known moons and contains numerous lakes and oceans. Although it is less extensive than Earth, it bears similarities to our planet due to the existence of liquids, wind and rain, which have created landscapes that are familiar to us.
Under its thick, hazy atmosphere of nitrogen and methane, astronomers have discovered mountains, dunes, and lakes. Instead of water, liquid methane and ethane flow through riverbed-like channels into seas the size of America’s Great Lakes.
The discovery of this geological process was made possible by the method of comparing images taken a few days away , which is used to locate and study asteroids, comets and other astronomical phenomena. Prior to the discovery, the Ligeia Mare region was believed to be empty of accidents.
Now astronomers think that the mysterious object could be due to the change of seasons on Titan , whose northern hemisphere would be in transition from spring to summer. They speculate that the changing winds could be forming waves in Ligeia Mare, or perhaps that the gases expelled from the interior of this sea are emerging to the surface in the form of bubbles.
