Another 'Magic Island'? Cassini Spots New Mystery in a Different Sea

Saturn's moon Titan is home to one of the most intriguing mysteries of our solar system - the "magic island" of the Ligeia Mare sea. Now, a new flyby of the Cassini spacecraft has revealed that another sea may boast similarly intriguing island-like features.

It is important to note that the seas of Titan are nothing like Earth's. While about 71 percent of the Earth is covered in water, Titan boasts vast hydrocarbon seas made primarily of methane and ethane liquid. This makes understanding what we see on Titan's surface difficult to understand, as all we know of the moon comes from long-distance observation, and photographs from the Cassini spacecraft, which has been circling Saturn and its natural satellites for more than a decade.

Photographs of the Ligeia Mare, Titan's second-largest sea, in 2013 revealed an unusual light patch of unknown material or sea that almost presented itself like a large island. However, subsequent flybys revealed that this "island" could appear and disappear, suggesting that it was not an island at all, but some other phenomenon - perhaps floating material, icebergs, or mats of bubbles from subsea vents.

Now, in an incredibly close flyby this past August, the Cassini spacecraft's radar instruments imaged a similarly bright and island-like feature in the Kraken Mare, Titan's largest sea.

This new spot resembled the "magic island" in many ways, however, Cassini was also able to observe the phenomenon in its Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS).

"Having observations at two different wavelengths provides researchers with important clues to the nature of these enigmatic objects," NASA reported in a recent release, adding that the Cassini team says the new reading resembles readings of waves or wet ground.

And while that certainly doesn't sound like they can rule out the possibility of these magic islands being actual islands, it's far more likely that they are exactly what has been suggested in the past - patches of intense waves or floating debris.

Unfortunately, mystery lovers are probably going to have to wait a long time until the "big reveal," as Cassini will only have one more chance to observe the original "magic island" in January 2015. After that, the craft will be preparing to retire with its fiery Grand Finale in 2016.

These findings are being presented  at the Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting of the American Astronomical Society held in Tucson, Arizona, and should be viewed as preliminary.