Titan's complex and strange world revealed

NewScientist.com

Two days after Cassini's close encounter with Titan captured the first ever close-up images, it is becoming clear that Saturn's giant moon is a complex and strange world.

Its diverse geography is crossed by channels, ridges and great windblown streaks. Organic materials abound, and may even cover the moon entirely.

It was possible that Cassini would reveal a dead world covered in impact craters. But in fact Titan boasts an enormous variety of surface structures - and it is evolving. "Titan is an extremely dynamic and active place," says Jonathan Lunine at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, an interdisciplinary scientist with the Cassini mission.

Surprisingly, there is no clear sign of impact craters so far. There are some circular features that might be craters, but they have been largely eroded, or buried by organic material raining from the sky.