The Lakes of Titan?

Cassini’s radar may have found lakes of liquid methane or ethane all over the north polar region of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The patches resemble Earth’s lakes in shape, and the black ones reflect essentially no radar signal, meaning they are extremely smooth. The dark gray ones have a slightly rougher surface, possibly due to winds—finding their textures to vary in future passes would strongly support their liquid nature. The image below is centered near 80° N and 92° W and measures about 420 kilometers by 150 kilometers; its smallest visible details are about 500 meters in size. The image at right was taken near 73° N and 46° W and shows two lakes some 20 to 25 kilometers across, or a bit smaller than Lake Tahoe, joined by a relatively narrow channel. The lighter patches in the lake on the right indicate that it may be slowly drying out as summer approaches.

JPL built the Cassini orbiter and manages the mission, which is a joint effort of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency.