The eccentricity of Saturn’s orbit around the sun may be responsible for the unusually uneven distribution of methane and ethane lakes over the northern and southern polar regions of the planet’s largest moon, Titan according to researchers at the California Institute of Technology. On Earth, similar “astronomical forcing” of climate drives ice-age cycles. Liquid hydrocarbon–filled lakes in Titan’s northern high latitudes cover 20 times more area than lakes in the southern high latitudes. There are also significantly more partially filled and now-empty lakes in the north, as revealed by imaging data taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which has been surveying Saturn and its moons since 2004 Assuming that the asymmetry is not a statistical fluke (which is unlikely because of the large amount of data collected by Cassini), scientists initially considered the idea that “there is something inherently different about the northern polar region versus the south in terms of topography, such that liquid rains, drains, or infiltrates the ground more in one hemisphere,” says Oded Aharonson, associate professor of planetary science at Caltech.
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Climate-Change Cycles of Saturn’s Titan Similar to Earth’s Ice-Age Cycles
