SATURN’s cloud-shrouded moon Titan is struggling to keep its secrets. French
astronomers who have peered through the mist using ground telescopes say they
have spotted polar caps and lofty mountains covered with methane ice. But an
American researcher says that images from the Hubble telescope paint a different
picture.
Athena Coustenis of the Paris-Meudon Observatory and her colleagues used a
telescope adapted to pick up infrared light from Titan. They discovered a wide,
bright region stretching one-sixth of the way around the moon’s equator, with
two or three even brighter spots dotted along it. “I think it could be a…
