Saturn's Moon, Titan, Has a 'Magic Island' that Suddenly Appeared

Using Cassini, astronomers have found a strange and mysterious geologic feature on Saturn's moon, Titan. Scientists have found a "Magic Island" that seems to appear and disappear, depending on certain conditions.

Titan is the largest of Saturn's 62 known moons. A world of lakes and seas, it actually closely resembles Earth; it has both winds and rains that drive its landscape and possesses a thick, hazy nitrogen-methane atmosphere. Yet its lakes and seas aren't created by water; instead, Titan has liquid methane and ethane that flow through riverlike channels.

The researchers first spotted the unusual "Magic Island" by looking through Cassini spacecraft data. The scientists flipped between older Titan images and new ones and found the geologic feature in the region of Ligeia Mare. Because Titan is slowly transitioning between spring to summer, it's possible that this particular feature may only appear during specific times.

There are also other explanations. It's possible that Northern hemisphere winds may be kicking up and forming waves on Ligeia Mare, creating a type of "ghost" island. Another explanation could be that gases may push out from the sea floor of Ligeia Mare and rise to the surface as bubbles or that sunken solids formed by the winter could become buoyant and float to the top with the onset of warmer temperatures.

"Likely, several different processes-such as wind, rain and tides-might affect the methane and ethane lakes on Titan," said Jason Hofgartner, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Ultimately, it will help us to understand better our own liquid environments here on Earth."

Currently, researchers aren't sure exactly what this "island" actually is. That said, scientists plan to continue studying the phenomenon to see if it disappears once more and what might have caused its sudden appearance in the first place.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Geoscience.