Summer in Titan's northern hemisphere

Last close encounter with Titan Cassini had on April, 22. There will no more close flyby, and Cassini is on its way to the Grand Finale. However, spacecraft continues to study Titan from a distance. This image was obtained on May, 7, during third dive between rings and Saturn, when Cassini passed 488000 kilometers above moon's surface.

It is the beginning of summer in Titan's northern hemisphere, and  the summer solstice is a couple of weeks away, and temperature increases from the chilly -183 C to comfortable - 179 C .  As sign of the summer, an outburst of multiple clouds appeared at mid-northern latitudes.  

Image: NASA/JPL

Three bands of feathery methane clouds appeared in northern latitudes. Dark spots near the North Pole are lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbones.  Two versions of this image are presented here, one with stronger enhancement (figure A) and one with much softer enhancement (figure B) 

Image: NASA/JPL - Detailed image of summer clouds -   Image scale is about 3 kilometers per pixel 

Northern band is  between 52 and 59 degrees north latitude, southern -  between 30 and 38 degrees north latitude. It is still unknown, whether these clouds bring methan rains, filling the rivers and lakes of the North.

Dark equatorial region - great duneland. Scientists suggest that Titanian sand consist of water ice grains, mixed with hydrocarbons. At low temperatures water ice is as hard as stone.

As to polar seas - there is a plethora of data about their depth, obtained during last close flyby, on April 22, but no results still were published. Probably it will happen until the end of this year. Summer climate in the northern and southern hemispheres is different - almost all seas and lakes are concentrated near the North Pole.

Meanwhile, Cassini is preparing for the next, 4th flyby through the upper atmosphere of Saturn. This will happen on May 15, at 4:42 pm UTC.  During this orbit, Cassini gets within 2,660 kilometers of Saturn’s 1 bar pressure level.