Watching Cloudy Skies Over Titan

NASA's Cassini Spacecraft is finally seeing summer storm clouds hovering over Titian's immense hydrocarbon seas. Experts have long anticipated these storms, which have come later than expected on the Saturn moon.

Cassini finally obtained imagery of the clouds over Titan's northern seas late last July, following a remarkably close flyby. The clouds and their movements were tracked over a large methane sea known as the Ligeia Mare. Not as much is understood about the Mare as experts would want, but they hope that better understanding the sea's storm and wind patterns could help reveal more of its mysteries.

Just last June Nature World News detailed how experts are still struggling to uncover the cause of a "magic island" that mysteriously appears and disappears in the Ligeia Mare.

"We're eager to find out if the clouds' appearance signals the beginning of summer weather patterns, or if it is an isolated occurrence," Elizabeth Turtle, a Cassini imaging team associate at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, explained in a recent statement. "Also, how are the clouds related to the seas? Did Cassini just happen catch them over the seas, or do they form there preferentially?"

NASA reports that Cassini first showed experts Titan's cloud activity around the moon's south poll during the spacecraft's arrival in 2004. However, by 2010 a huge storm swept across the moon that went against everything that early weather models had predicted. Since then only a few clouds can be observed anywhere on Titian, to the confusion of Cassini's handlers.

With the return of these churning clouds, researchers are excited to look deeper into this mystery in an attempt at understanding otherworldly weather.

Cassini captured images of these latest clouds as it streaked away from Titan following a very close flyby. The aging spacecraft will continue on its merry way, observing Saturn and its moons until 2016, when it will begin its "Grand Finale" mission, plummeting towards Saturn's fiery atmosphere in one last hoorah.