Possible tropical lakes on Titan from observations of dark terrain

Low-latitude near-infrared spectral images of Titan reveal what are probably dark liquid lakes of methane. Saturn's moon Titan has a 'methane cycle' that is similar, in principle, to Earth's water cycle, although surface liquid seems relatively scarce on Titan, being detected mainly at high latitudes. The fact that Titan can supply its atmosphere with methane — together with signs of surface water erosion around the Huygens probe landing site in what seems to be an otherwise arid region of the tropics — suggests that there may be more surface liquid to be discovered. This paper reports near-infrared spectral images of an area in the tropics that reveal a dark region, which could indicate the presence of liquid methane on the moon's surface, supplied by subterranean sources. Titan has clouds, rain and lakes—like Earth—but composed of methane rather than water. Unlike Earth, most of the condensable methane (the equivalent of 5 m depth globally averaged1) lies in the atmosphere. Liquid detected on the surface (about 2 m deep) has been found by radar images only poleward of 50° latitude2,3, while dune fields pervade the tropics4. General circulation models explain this dichotomy, predicting that methane efficiently migrates to the poles from these lower latitudes5,6,7. Here we report an analysis of near-infrared spectral images8 of the region between 20° N and 20° S latitude. The data reveal that the lowest fluxes in seven wavelength bands that probe Titan's surface occur in an oval region of about 60 × 40 km2, which has been observed repeatedly since 2004. Radiative transfer analyses demonstrate that the resulting spectrum is consistent with a black surface, indicative of liquid methane on the surface. Enduring low-latitude lakes are best explained as supplied by subterranean sources (within the last 10,000 years), which may be responsible for Titan’s methane, the continual photochemical depletion of which furnishes Titan's organic chemistry9.