Some interesting items:<br /><br />MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE<br />CASSINI IMAGING CENTRAL LABORATORY FOR OPERATIONS (CICLOPS) SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE, BOULDER, COLORADO
http://ciclops.org media@ciclops.org<br /><br />Preston Dyches (720) 974-5823<br />CICLOPS/Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.<br /><br />For Immediate Release: March 9, 2005<br /><br />CASSINI IMAGES REVEAL AN ACTIVE, EARTH-LIKE WORLD<br /><br />Saturn’s hazy largest moon, Titan – a body long held to be a frozen analog of early Earth – has a surface shaped largely by an Earth-like interplay of tectonics, erosion by fluids, winds, and perhaps volcanism. <br />So reports the Cassini imaging team in today’s issue of Nature, in their first published presentation of findings from images of Titan gathered since last July.<br /><br />Titan is about the same size and density as Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede. Unlike Ganymede, though, it probably has not undergone tidal heating – a well-known internal engine for modification of planetary surfaces. For these reasons, Titan was expected to have a surface at least as old as Ganymede’s and pocked with at least as many large craters. Over the past billion years, Titan should have accumulated as many as a hundred craters, 20 kilometers (12 miles) wide and larger, across its entire surface.<br /><br />Yet, that is not what is seen in the images of this world Cassini has obtained so far.<br /><br />Dr. Elizabeth Turtle, imaging team associate in the Lunar and Planetary Lab at the University of Arizona in Tucson (and co-author on the paper in Nature) said, “We’ve only just begun exploring the surface of Titan, but what’s struck me the most so far is the variety of the surface patterns that we’re seeing. The surface is very complex, and shows evidence for so many different modification processes.”<br /><br />Images collected over the last eight months during a distant flyby of the south polar region a