Saturn’s Titan Moon Has Puzzling Dunes

Cassini's radar images show dunes that "are 330 feet high (100 meters) and run parallel to each other for hundreds of miles at Titan's equator."

- Ralph Lorenz, Ph.D., Univ. of Arizona

May 5, 2006   Tucson, Arizona- The University of Arizona (UA) reports that it was only two years ago that planetary scientists thought the "dark equatorial regions of Titan might be liquid oceans." But now new radar evidence shows the "dark seas" are actually sand dunes very similar to those in the Namibian Desert in Africa (shown below). Cassini's radar images show dunes that "are 330 feet high (100 meters) and run parallel to each other for hundreds of miles at Titan's equator." It's theorized that the dunes are sand trapped in liquid ethane.