Ontario Lacus
Ontario Lacus is a lake filled with methane and ethane near the south pole of Saturn's moon Titan. It was identified as a hydrocarbon lake and confirmed[1] by data from the Cassini spacecraft. This discovery was announced in the 31 July 2008 edition of Nature. Ontario Lacus is about 20,000 km2 in area, and is named after Lake Ontario in North America, which is a similar size and shape.
 Ontario Lacus is the dark shape near the centre-left of this image of Titan's south pole. | |
| Feature on Titan | |
|---|---|
| Type | Lacus |
| Latitude | 72S |
| Longitude | 183W |
| Diameter | 235 km (146 mi) |
| Eponym | Lake Ontario |
Ontario Lacus Media
Radar image of Titan's south polar region, showing Ontario Lacus and surroundings. In the annotated version, the putative shoreline of a proposed former south polar sea of Titan is outlined.
The left and right images show the large catchment areas of Lake Eyre (dark grey region) and Ontario Lacus (red outline) respectively. In both cases, the lake area (blue, dashed ovals) is much smaller than the catchment area.
References
- ↑ NASA Confirms Liquid Lake On Saturn Moon. NASA. 2007-07-30. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20080730.html. Retrieved 2007-07-30.
Other websites
- Staff (2008-08-03). Titan's Ethane Lake. Astrobiology Magazine. http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2829&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0. Retrieved 2008-08-05.
