Earth’s coastlines are fascinating places where liquids mix and materials are shaped into distinct landforms like river deltas. Similar active coastlines exist on Saturn’s moon Titan, where liquid hydrocarbons (methane and ethane) take the place of water. However, studying Titan’s coastlines, especially river deltas, is challenging due to limited imaging data and the unknown nature of its materials. To overcome these challenges, planetary scientists from Brown University, MIT, MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Cornell University developed a new model that simulates Earth’s coastlines as if seen by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. They discovered that large landforms can be detected on Titan with the right contrasts. They then returned to Titan and re-mapped its coastlines. Surprisingly, they found that many of Titan’s rivers do not end in deltas, unlike on Earth where many large rivers host river deltas. They also found submerged features on Titan’s seafloors that suggest changing sea level and/or active flows under the sea surface.
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