Researchers are trying to figure out what the geological feature of Saturn’s moon actually is.
Saturn’s moon Titan may contain hundreds of strange ridges called yardangs. Such a geological feature could shed light on how the icy satellite’s surface varies from region to region.
Yardangs could litter Titan’s polar regions, scientists say. Yardangs are long, perfectly straight ridges. This surface is created when erosion breaks off strips of soft soil. Therefore, such features can help understand Titan’s complex geology.
The fact is that at the higher latitudes of Titan, hundreds of strange lines were discovered, which planetary scientists called bright linear features.
Experts believe that these are either sand dunes, which have already been observed on Titan’s equator, or yardangs. Both natural phenomena are long, straight systems of ridges and depressions, so it is quite difficult to distinguish them from each other.
“From orbit it’s quite difficult to tell what we’re looking at; all we see is long, straight lines,” says Jani Radebaugh of Brigham Young University.
Radebaugh and her team used a computer model to compare more than 200 features on Titan to dunes and yardangs on Earth.
On our planet, yardangs tend to be straighter than dunes and appear brighter on radar images. On Titan, all detected objects were straighter and also looked brighter in the images, which gives scientists the idea of yardangs.
The fact that Titan’s lower latitudes are dominated by dunes and its higher latitudes are dominated by yardangs could help researchers learn more about conditions in different regions on the moon.
“Maybe there is no sand on Titan at high latitudes, or there is other material that erodes more easily,” Radebaugh said.
NASA’s Dragonfly spacecraft, which will launch to Titan in 2028, should provide a wealth of new information that will help us understand this.
