The sand dunes on the surface of Titan, Saturn’s moon, are shaped like dunes, even very similar to deserts on Earth.
Photos from NASA’s Cassini probe show that these dunes are very rich in form, over 90 meters high and over 1.5 kilometers wide. However, they are made up of solid hydrocarbons, chemicals found in crude oil, and not sand.
Sand dunes are the second most dominant terrain on Titan, covering over 6 million square kilometers, the size of the United States. Therefore, their training could help scientists better understand the strange environment of this cloud-covered planet.
Although similar in shape, Titan’s sand dunes are much more massive than those in the Arabian Peninsula or Namibia on Earth. They are on average 1 to 2 km wide, hundreds of kilometers long and about 100 m high. However, their different sizes and distances indicate the environment in which they form and thrive.
Using data obtained from the spacecraft, Alice Le Gall, a former postdoctoral fellow in the NASA Rocket Engine Lab and her colleagues have discovered, the size of the sand dunes on Titan is controlled by at least two factors: altitude and latitude. The higher you go, the thinner the sand dunes and the distance.
Each season on Titan lasts approximately 7 years. Due to Saturn’s elliptical orbit, Titan’s southern hemisphere has shorter summers but is warmer and has lower humidity. Drier sand grains are easily blown away, forming sand dunes.
“As these sand grains move north, we believe that the increased moisture on the surface makes it more difficult for the sand molecules to move,” said Le Gall. As a result, it is difficult to form sand dunes ”.
