Dan Harlow

At 100,000 square kilometers in volume, the lake pictured above is located at the southern pole of Saturn’s moon Titan and part of a complex of formations recently imaged by the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. 20% larger than Lake Superior, which is one of Earth’s largest lakes, it also covers a larger percentage of land mass than that of our own inland sea the Black Sea. Of course you may not want to get your space dingy and carbon fiber astro-rod ready just yet because all of Titan’s lakes are filled with liquid hydrocarbons such as liquid ethane, methane and dissolved nitrogen.

From Live Science:

Scientists say it rains methane and ethane there, filling the lakes and seas. These liquids also carve meandering rivers and channels on the moon’s surface.

“The lakes we are observing on Titan appear to be in varying states of fullness, suggesting their involvement in a complex hydrologic system akin to Earth’s water cycle. This makes Titan unique among the extra-terrestrial bodies in our solar system,” said Alex Hayes, a graduate student who studies Cassini radar data at the California Institute of Technology in the USA.

For those of you sill interested in making the longest fishing trip in human history, a seasons on Titan lasts for 7.5 years, a quarter of Saturn’s seasonal progression of 29.5 years.

Of course finding something to catch is another story and you might actually have more luck heading to Saturn’s smaller moon Enceladus.

New false color images also from the Cassini spacecraft highlight slushy geysers of what is almost certainly water ice. These geysers form the thin E-Ring of Saturn and have recently been discovered to emanate from the tiger stripes on the moon’s south polar region.

Scientists have theorized the geysers might be powered by the grinding of ice sheets against one another and the periodic opening and closing of gaps on the moon’s surface.

Both mechanisms were thought to be driven by a process called tidal heating. Because Enceladus’ path around Saturn is elliptical, it is pulled unevenly by the planet’s gravity at different points along its orbit. This creates a bulge on the moon’s surface that grows and shrinks depending on the moon’s distance from Saturn.

The repetitive motion generates friction and heat, which scientists suspect drives the tiger stripes to open and close.

Though Europa (the ice moon of Jupiter) and Mars have long been considered the prime candidates for finding life off of the Earth, many scientists believe Enceladus holds the best chance at harboring some form of life because most of the required organic compounds needed to create and sustain life (as we know it, anyway) already exists in fair abundance on the little moon.

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