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Methane Lakes on Titan

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Radar image of Titan, from Cassini
Reason
Scientists have uncovered evidence of the existence of lakes filled with liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan. Although the existence of such lakes or oceans has been predicted for 20 years, this is the first time that convincing evidence has been gathered due to a dense haze preventing a closer look. Radar images taken by the spacecraft Cassini during a fly-by of the moon on July 22nd last year show more than 75 large bodies of liquid ranging in diameter from three to 70km in the moon's northern hemisphere. It was taken by the Cassini spacecraft, and is a NASA public domain license. It currently appears in the Titan article
Articles this image appears in
Titan (moon)
Creator
NASA
Nominator
Preetikapoor0
  • Support — Preetikapoor0 22:18, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The news section would be a better place. I realize the scientific finding is moderately spectacular, but the picture isn't. --Dschwen 23:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support perhaps not the most striking of images, but it is very encyclopedic, very informative, and very rare (due to contemporary technological limitations). The image is also technically flawless, being very large and without artifacts or noise. There are few pictures like this on Wikipedia; I think it's reasonable to call this one of our best pictures. Jellocube27 02:12, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose It's not interesting like a featured picture needs to be. Like Dschwen said try to get it nominated in another category and it should do well. Why1991 03:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  • support - lakes on a moon of Saturn = spectacular in my book. Debivort 05:02, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral Higly encyclopedic, but not exactly what I would call a Wow image. — Arjun 05:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral Although it has an encyclopedic level that is off the pages, it's a pretty lousy picture. S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 05:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support — Amazing photograph. How is this image NOT interesting? Certainly spectacular, as Debivort stated. ♠ SG →Talk 06:24, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Folks are ooh-ing and aah-ing over a Photoshopped picture of a coin, but complain about a close-up image of an object a light hour away? Is this reverse week? ~ trialsanderrors 08:55, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • But this is just a radar image, it could be anything anywhwere. There is no indication in the picture itself that this is a lighthour away or that we are seeing methane lakes. Don't get me wrong here, as a physicist I'm all for the excitement of the find, the pic on its own is what I find unremarkable/unspectacular. --Dschwen 09:09, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: I like it. Better than the coin too. --Iriseyes 13:44, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak support I think the picure is attractive, it's encyclopedic, difficult to reproduce and of high quality, the only thing that isn't so great is the blank space, which could perhaps be cropped out to give a smaller overall picture or be filled in as the research continues? Personally I think there is more than enough explanation on the image page of what it is and with a bit of a tweak the thumbnail caption could convey exactly what the picture is of. Terri G 14:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Dschwen said it. --Bridgecross 20:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Very encyclopedic photo, but do something about the black space that comes with images like these. MER-C 12:45, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support -- is this not one of the better pictures in Wikipedia? It is certainly more interesting than potatoes and coins, no matter how technical perfect those shots are. Madman 19:02, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • strong support. I believe that like the photo of Edison and Phonograph , we should see the macroimportance of this image rather than just the quality. It revealed the liquid methane lakes on the Titan, which nobody had seen before. It was important enough to on the COVER of Nature, [1] which is the most prestigious journal in whole scientific world. I think that alone is sufficient to meet the criteria of a featured picture. Preetikapoor0 22:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - False color suggests dirt and water, which would give the average viewer an inaccurate impression. Choice of angle is a bad idea: if you're not soing to show a true landscape, use an isomorphic (map) projection. Also needs distance key. I think the raw data could be turned into a FP, but whoever's running the post-processing for NASA went for "pretty" over "encyclopedic". —Dgiest c 08:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The problem is that Cassini is orbiting Saturn and not Titan. so you do not have any control over the angle of view or the distance and due to this you rarely get the opportunity to take a picture of titan. We do not have many options as this is the ONLY image that NASA has. Intensity in this colorized image is proportional to how much radar brightness is returned, or more specifically, the logarithm of the radar backscatter cross-section. The colors are not a representation of what the human eye would see. The lakes, darker than the surrounding terrain, are emphasized here by tinting regions of low backscatter in blue. Radar-brighter regions are shown in tan. The image is centered near 80 degrees north, 35 degrees west and is about 140 kilometers (84 miles) across. Smallest details in this image are about 500 meters (1,640 feet) across. 68.61.233.160 02:20, 12 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:PIA09102PIA09102 Liquid Lakes on Titan.jpg Raven4x4x 07:30, 12 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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