Titan - Saturn's major moon - may have a surface of oily lakes or oceans, according to the latest radar research. The giant Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico has transmitted a beam of radio waves towards Titan, and detected a faint echo over two hours later. Analysis of the dim signal suggests the presence of craters filled with oily oceans or lakes beneath the clouds. In January 2005 a European Space Agency probe - Huygens - will parachute on to Titan's surface to see what is there. Titan is one of the most intriguing and significant bodies in the Solar System. Optical observations cannot see through the photochemical smog that shrouds the world, but infrared and radar radiation can get through, revealing a varied surface beneath the clouds. Ground-based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope have produced coarse maps of the surface, showing what could be a continent of rock and ice surrounded by hydrocarbon seas or lakes. Hydrocarbons - methane and ethane - could form oily oceans on the surface - whose waves lap against shorelines of ice stained by hydrocarbon drizzle from the sky.

The Arecibo signals took 2 hours and 15 minutes to return. A tiny fraction of the transmitted energy was detected at Arecibo as well as at the Green Bank radio telescope in the US.

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Titan is surely becoming one of the more unusual bodies in the solar system, with its unusual formation and make up, now we just need the poc to land there.

It kinda makes you wonder what "ET" is up to out there. Or what we really have on those space probes that we are always "crash landing."

I bet that oil won't be up there for too long if some one can help it.

Yeah, he's got oil rigs on the way as we speak.

I am really looking forward to seeing the pictures of Titan from the Huygens probe as it parachutes down through the atmosphere. It will only be able to transmit data for several hours, since it needs to send the data to the main Cassini probe (which will then transmit the information directly to Earth). Since Cassini will quickly recede from Titan as it orbits Saturn, the "data transmission window" will only be open for several hours.

Mind you, I'm also looking forward to seeing some cracking close up photographs of the other satellites of Saturn. None are anywhere near as large as Titan (which is the second largest satellite in the entire Solar System), but several are between 500 miles and 1000 miles in diameter (one quarter to one half the diameter of the Moon).

Chris Low.