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Cassini has shown that modern liquid bodies are largely restricted to North polar latitudes ( > 55°) with a comparatively small volume of liquid in the southern hemisphere. This dichotomy has previously been attributed to Saturn’s current orbital configuration, but if correct, the configuration is transient and southern depositional basins equivalent in volume to the northern seas are required. In the South polar region, we have identified four dry broad depressions, equivalent in area to the northern seas. Morphologic and topographic data suggest that they represent paleoseas that were filled during an earlier epoch more favorable to the accumulation of southern liquids. All four basins are characterized by topographically low, SAR-dark plains, along with dissected margins that mark putative paleo-shorelines. These characteristics imply that these depressions represent depositional basins. Topographically, the basins have a combined volume that is ∼ 3 times greater than the northern seas, sufficiently large to contain all of the northern liquids. A lack of evidence for 5-µm bright material, interpreted as evaporite, challenges our interpretations in the absence of efficient removal or burial mechanisms. The long time scale over which fluids migrate, however, suggests that any deposits have ample time to be altered/removed.

We derive fields of solutions for the surface properties (roughness and permittivity) of the liquid hydrocarbon bodies Ligeia, Kraken and Punga Mare on Titan by applying the Radar Statistical Reconnaissance (RSR) technique to the Cassini RADAR observations in altimeter mode during the northern early summer. At the time of observation, Kraken and Ligeia were confined within root-mean-square heights of 1.5–2.5 mm (similar to wave heights of 6–10 mm), correlation lengths of 45–115 mm, and corresponding to effective slopes of 1.1–2.4°. The latter extends up to 3.6–4.9° if the rougher Punga is included. The lower bound of those ranges has to be considered if the composition of the seas is methane-dominant. These are the first measurements to simultaneously constrain both the vertical and horizontal roughness parameters of Titan's seas from the same observations. Our results are representative for the global properties of the sea-scaled portion of the studied tracks and suggest that quiet surfaces are a dominant trend over the seas during the northern early summer. Fields of rougher textures, if existent, might develop mainly over local patches and/or might not be sustained over significant periods of time.

International audience; Cassini RADAR images of Titan's south polar region acquired during southern summer contain lake features which disappear between observations. These features show a tenfold increases in backscatter cross-section between images acquired one year apart, which is inconsistent with common scattering models without invoking temporal variability. The morphologic boundaries are transient, further supporting changes in lake level. These observations are consistent with the exposure of diffusely scattering lakebeds that were previously hidden by an attenuating liquid medium. We use a two-layer model to explain backscatter variations and estimate a drop in liquid depth of approximately 1-m-per-year. On larger scales, we observe shoreline recession between ISS and RADAR images of Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in Titan's south polar region. The recession, occurring between June 2005 and July 2009, is inversely proportional to slopes estimated from altimetric profiles and the exponential decay of near-shore backscatter, consistent with a uniform reduction of 4 ± 1.3 m in lake depth.Of the potential explanations for observed surface changes, we favor evaporation and infiltration. The disappearance of dark features and the recession of Ontario's shoreline represents volatile transport in an active methane-based hydrologic cycle. Observed loss rates are compared and shown to be consistent with available global circulation models. To date, no unambiguous changes in lake level have been observed between repeat images in the north polar region, although further investigation is warranted. These observations constrain volatile flux rates in Titan's hydrologic system and demonstrate that the surface plays an active role in its evolution. Constraining these seasonal changes represents the first step toward our understanding of longer climate cycles that may determine liquid distribution on Titan over orbital time periods.

The Cassini spacecraft has acquired 25 radar altimeter elevation profiles along Titan's surface as of April 2008, and we have analyzed 18 of these for which there are currently reconstructed ephemeris data. Altimeter measurements were collected at spatial footprint sizes from 6–60 km along ground tracks of length 400–3600 km. The elevation profiles yield topographic information at this resolution with a statistical height accuracy of 35–50 m and kilometer-scale errors several times greater. The data exhibit significant variations in terrain, from flat regions with little topographic expression to very rugged Titanscapes. The bandwidth of the transmitted waveform admits vertical resolution of the terrain height to 35 m at each observed location on the surface. Variations in antenna pointing and changes in surface statistics cause the range-compressed radar echoes to exhibit strong systematic and time-variable biases of hundreds of meters in delay. It is necessary to correct the received echoes for these changes, and we have derived correction algorithms such that the derived echo profiles are accurate at the 100 m level for off-nadir pointing errors of 0.3° and 0.6°, for leading edge and echo centroid estimators, respectively. The leading edge of the echo yields the elevation of the highest points on the surface, which we take to be the peaks of any terrain variation. The mean value of the echo delay is more representative of the mean elevation, so that the difference of these values gives an estimate of any local mountain heights. Finding locations where these values diverge indicates higher-relief terrain. Elevation features are readily seen in the height profiles. Several of the passes show mountains of several hundred m altitude, spread over 10's or even 100's of km in spatial extent, so that slopes are very small. Large expanses of sub-100 m topography are commonplace on Titan, so it is rather smooth in many locations. Other areas exhibit more relief, although the overall observed variation in surface height on any pass is less than about 1 km. Some elevation features correspond to observed changes in brightness in Cassini infrared images, but many do not. Correspondence between the imaging SAR ground tracks and the altimeter paths is limited, so that identifying elevation changes with higher resolution SAR features is premature at present.

International audience; Dune fields dominate ∼13% of Titan's surface and represent an important sink of carbon in the methane cycle. Herein, we discuss correlations in dune morphometry with altitude and latitude. These correlations, which have important implications in terms of geological processes and climate on Titan, are investigated through the microwave electromagnetic signatures of dune fields using Cassini radar and radiometry observations. The backscatter and emissivity from Titan's dune terrains are primarily controlled by the amount of interdune area within the radar footprint and are also expected to vary with the degree of the interdunal sand cover. Using SAR-derived topography, we find that Titan's main dune fields (Shangri-La, Fensal, Belet and Aztlan) tend to occupy the lowest elevation areas in Equatorial regions occurring at mean elevations between ∼−400 and ∼0 m (relative to the geoid). In elevated dune terrains, we show a definite trend towards a smaller dune to interdune ratio and possibly a thinner sand cover in the interdune areas. A similar correlation is observed with latitude, suggesting that the quantity of windblown sand in the dune fields tends to decrease as one moves farther north. The altitudinal trend among Titan's sand seas is consistent with the idea that sediment source zones most probably occur in lowlands, which would reduce the sand supply toward elevated regions. The latitudinal preference could result from a gradual increase in dampness with latitude due to the asymmetric seasonal forcing associated with Titan's current orbital configuration unless it is indicative of a latitudinal preference in the sand source distribution or wind transport capacity.

International audience; Titan's equatorial regions are covered by vast fields of longitudinal dunes. Several observations point to solid hydrocarbons as the most likely candidate for the dune particle composition. Together with the polar lakes and seas, dune regions are thus the main reservoir of organic deposits on Titan. A refined estimate of the dune material volume and distribution is essential to constrain Titan total organic inventory and therefore to understand the carbon cycle on Titan. Using Cassini SAR observations we find that Titan's dune fields are generally hosted by basins and may cover ~12.5% of Titan's surface, which corresponds to an area of ~10 million km2 (roughly the area of the United States). Polarized radiometry observations indicate that dune particles are mainly composed of organic solids, consistent with spectroscopic measurements. This would imply that the dune particles were dominantly created by atmospheric photochemical production rather than fluvial erosion. However, it is not clear whether the aggregation occurred primarily during aerosol sedimentation from the stratosphere to the surface, or by subsequent sticking and growth during fluvial or eolian transport. Assuming that, everywhere, the dunes are 100m-high and that the interdunes spaces are clear of dune material and of equal area than the dunes, the volume of sand-sized sediments should approach ~250 000 km3, which is an order of magnitude higher than the current estimate of the volume of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan (Lorenz et al., 2008). However, the combined radar and radiometry measurements indicate regional variations among the dunes. In this paper we will show that differences in the microwave backscatter and emission of the dune regions can be well explained by various degrees of exposure of the icy bedrock of Titan in the interdunal corridors. In some regions, a thick sheet of sand-sized material covers the interdunes. In other places, the original substrate is peeking through. These variations need to be taken into account in order to estimate the volume of sand-sized sediments. Investigating them also bring new insights on the distribution of the available sand-sized sediments supply, which vary across Titan probably owing to differences in the ground humidity and wind patterns.

International audience; The Cassini RADAR pass T39 of the south polar region reveals extremely varied and in some cases complex surface morphologies, indicating that a range of geologic processes have operated, and are operating, in the region.

For some 19 areas of Titan's surface, the Cassini RADAR instrument has obtained synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images during two different flybys. The time interval between flybys varies from several weeks to two years. We have used the apparent misregistration (by 10-30 km) of features between separate flybys to construct a refined model of Titan's spin state, estimating six parameters: north pole right ascension and declination, spin rate, and these quantities' first time derivatives We determine a pole location with right ascension of 39.48 degrees and declination of 83.43 degrees corresponding to a 0.3 degree obliquity. We determine the spin rate to be 22.5781 deg day–1 or 0.001 deg day–1 faster than the synchronous spin rate. Our estimated corrections to the pole and spin rate exceed their corresponding standard errors by factors of 80 and 8, respectively. We also found that the rate of change in the pole right ascension is –30 deg century–1, ten times faster than right ascension rate of change for the orbit normal. The spin rate is increasing at a rate of 0.05 deg day–1 per century. We observed no significant change in pole declination over the period for which we have data. Applying our pole correction reduces the feature misregistration from tens of km to 3 km. Applying the spin rate and derivative corrections further reduces the misregistration to 1.2 km.

International audience; Thousands of longitudinal dunes have recently been discovered by the Titan Radar Mapper on the surface of Titan. These are found mainly within ±30° of the equator in optically-, near-infrared-, and radar-dark regions, indicating a strong proportion of organics, and cover well over 5% of Titan's surface. Their longitudinal duneform, interactions with topography, and correlation with other aeolian forms indicate a single, dominant wind direction aligned with the dune axis plus lesser, off-axis or seasonally alternating winds. Global compilations of dune orientations reveal the mean wind direction is dominantly eastwards, with regional and local variations where winds are diverted around topographically high features, such as mountain blocks or broad landforms. Global winds may carry sediments from high latitude regions to equatorial regions, where relatively drier conditions prevail, and the particles are reworked into dunes, perhaps on timescales of thousands to tens of thousands of years. On Titan, adequate sediment supply, sufficient wind, and the absence of sediment carriage and trapping by fluids are the dominant factors in the presence of dunes.

In this paper we analyze Cassini's Titan Radar Mapper recent flybys and yet more evidence of dark linear dunes, in the latitude between 30° S and 30° N, whose orientations are somewhat comparable to previous dune observations but at closer study show morphological differences. The appearance of Titan's dunes depends on the projected look direction of the Cassini Radar antenna, incidence angle and resolution. Dune fields are generally oriented East/West on Titan, and for many radar observations the flyby is in the equatorial plane. At closest approach the imaging direction is most nearly normal to the dune direction such as in the central portion of the T8 swath. Away from that configuration, and especially past the -/+10 minutes from close approach, the relative azimuth angle that the projected look direction of the Cassini Radar antenna has with respect to the surface changes rapidly along with incidence angle and resolution resulting in signal attenuation of the imaged features. Observational biases in the SAR images are key for dunes comparison across Titan's equatorial belt. The results show that in some regions the projected look direction could be on the order of 60° and parallel to the long axis of the radar dark features direction (i.e. T16, T25, T28), therefore suggesting that the variation in backscatter must be a combination of compositional dunes dark material and bright interdune material, varying roughness and topography when present. This suggests that we cannot assume that all the dune fields currently imaged can be characterized simply on the bases of their orientation and therefore we suggest that the characterization of the imaged surface features should be divided into at least two categories: -1) topography driven (in which Radar-clinometry can be applied); -2) compositional or due to varying roughness.

International audience

Over the course of a year, Cassini RADAR obtained Synthetic Aperture Radar images covering 69 percent of Titan's polar region north of 65 degrees; the region being 1.4E6 km3 in extent, greater than double the land area of the USA. We observe several hundred lakes with a range of morphological expression, including areally massive and morphologically distinctive "seas", covering ~15% of the polar region. Lakes are extremely radar dark, consistent with a lossy liquid hydrocarbon. Preliminary laboratory estimates suggest that loss tangents in the range 10E4 to 2x10E3 are reasonable, which implies that one can see through at least a few to many tens of m of liquids before the noise floor is reached, consistent with observed brightening towards many lake shores. North polar lake volumes are most likely in the 8E3 - 1.4E6 km3 range. Uncertainties will be reduced as more data, both image-based and experimental, are obtained but we can conclude with a high degree of confidence that hydrocarbon lakes on Titan are more voluminous than known terrestrial oil reserves; current estimates range from 2248 - 3896 billion barrels of oil (J. Hakes, 2000, Long Term World Oil Supply, Meeting of the Am. Ass. Pet. Geol., 18th April 2000, New Orleans, LA, http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/presentations/2000/long_term_supply.), hence 357 - 619 km3 . Small lakes often occupy steep-sided depressions, and although thermal and cryovolcanic origins cannot be completely ruled out, we are seeing growing geomorphologic evidence for dissolution chemistry, indicative of karst-like geology. The dichotomy between small lakes over slightly more than one half of the region, and seas on the other half, may be best explained by a topographic anomaly causing sub-surface flow of materials from the lakes to the seas. This may also explain observations by the Cassini ISS team (E. Turtle et al., in prep.) of a putative massive sea extending considerably further south than other observed north polar lakes.

International audience

During the past two years, radar tracks on the icy satellites have more than doubled the number of observations reported by Ostro et al. (2006, Icarus 183, 479-490). Our scatterometry has now yielded estimates of the 2.2-cm- wavelength radar albedo in the same linear (SL) polarization as transmitted for Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Phoebe. Our tracks have sampled widely separated subradar locations on most of the satellites, in some cases using beams comparable to or larger than the target's disc and in others using beams significantly smaller than the disc. Hence we can begin to assess the dispersion in these objects' distributions of radar reflectivity. The 2.2-cm SL radar albedo varies by at least several tens of percent on at least Dione, Rhea, Enceladus, and Iapetus. For Enceladus, a scatterometric observation centered on (29 S, 243 W) with a beamwidth of 1.2 Enceladus diameters gives the largest disc-integrated SL radar albedo obtained at any wavelength for any solar system object (including Europa), probably because of the extreme purity of at least the uppermost few decimeters of the water-ice regolith on much of the hemisphere facing the radar. For Iapetus, multi-beam, disc-resolved measurements disclose that the disparity in the 2.2-cm SL radar albedos between the optically bright and dark terrains is greater than that inferred by Ostro et al. (2006). During the Iapetus 49 flyby shortly after this meeting's abstract deadline, radar observations will include SAR imaging with 2-to-12-km surface resolution covering much of the visible disc, using beam sizes of about 120 km (less than one tenth of an Iapetus diameter), plus a short altimetric measurement with 35-m range resolution. The radar imaging will be mostly of the optically dark terrain and will include tracks across the equatorial ridge and the largest impact structures in Cassini Regio. The Iapetus SAR images will be the first of an icy satellite for which high-resolution optical images are available, and therefore will provide useful lessons for interpreting Titan SAR images.

We previously reported an initial determination of Titan's rotational state from fits to overlapping radar images. We have since discovered a coding error in software used to make these fits, which led to systematic offsets of 1-2 km in recovered positions. While our principal results remain qualitatively unchanged, with this error corrected, the pole movement we previously reported (our weakest result) is now counterindicated. Our revised best fit is essentially the same as the "best-fit no pole wobble" result discussed at the top of the second column on page 1675. The determined pole location did not change significantly after the bug fix and thus we still conclude that the spin axis is not in the plane formed by Titan's orbit normal and the normal to the Laplace plane. Due to the correlations between pole wobble and spin rate (see Figure 3 on page 1672), the new best fit has a spin rate that differs from the synchronous value by an amount that is three times smaller than the value reported in the paper. The pole location changed by less than 0.01 deg (~500 m on the surface) and rate of increase in spin decreased by a factor of 2 from the previous fit. The new best-fit parameter values with 1σ error bars are: pole right ascension 39.4934 ± 0.0249 deg, pole declination 83.4368 ± 0.0024 deg, spin rate 22.57731 ± 0.00011 deg/day (0.00033 deg/day greater than synchronous spin rate), derivative of pole right ascension –6.52 ± 4.20 deg/century, derivative of pole declination –0.2212 ± 0.3567 deg/century, and derivative of spin rate 0.0247 ± 0.0050 deg/day/century. The corrected version of Table 3 (below) shows the residual systematic and random error of the several candidate models discussed in the paper. Fixing the bug reduced the residual systematic error of all the fitted models. The four models in which spin rate is allowed to vary from synchronous either due to a change in spin rate (Column 5, numbered from the left) or a change in its time derivative (Column 6) or both (Columns 7 and 8) have lower residual systematic errors and thus better represent the data than do the purely synchronous fit (Column 3). For this reason, an asynchronous spin rate is still supported by the data, although efforts (e.g., Mitchell 2009) to quantitatively interpret the asynchroneity should take our revised determination into account. On the other hand, as depicted by Columns 7 and 8, allowing the pole movement terms to vary from the predicted (IAU Titan) values results in no significant improvement in the fit, thus large short-term pole movement is not supported by the data. In fact, the best-fit values and error bars for the pole movement are consistent with the long-term pole trends that were predicted prior to the Cassini mission.

We describe four flow fields associated with channels that have been observed in Cassini Radar data of Titan.

SAR imagery obtained during Cassini's T16 Titan fly-by revealed numerous radar-dark features at > ~70° N, interpreted to be lakes [1] on the basis of their low radar reflectivity, morphology and consistency with predictions [2]. Later fly-bys revealed more lakes, and also overlapped with previous scenes, facilitating multi-angle, multi-temporal studies, with several more such opportunities over the coming months. Here we introduce our efforts to understand the nature of the lakes using such studies, focusing on one anomalous lake in particular, and address the issue of whether the observed lakes are liquid-filled or dry.