NASA spies liquid in Titanic lake

NASA scientists have announced that at least one of the giant lakes previously spied on Saturn's moon Titan contains liquid hydrocarbons - making it the "only body our solar system beyond Earth known to have liquid on its surface", as the agency puts it.

The lakes were identified by the Cassini spacecraft, and although scientists couldn't be sure they were liquid, "their dark appearance in radar indicates smoothness and their other properties point to the presence of liquids".

Investigators further suspected these features would be filled with methane, ethane and other light hydrocarbons, but Titan's hazy atmosphere - 95 per cent nitrogen and five per cent ethane, methane and other hydrocarbons - made confirmation difficult.

Back in December last year, though, Cassini used its visual and mapping instrument to cut through the atmospheric hydrocarbon smog and probe "chemically different materials based on the way they absorb and reflect infrared light" in the lake dubbed Ontario Lacus, lying in Titan's south polar region. The feature is roughly 7,800 square miles in area, "slightly larger than North America's Lake Ontario", NASA notes.