The computer-genrated image above unveils the coastline of a bay from one of the largest bodies of liquid in Titan's north polar region. It was obtained with the landscape generator Terragen on the basis of a radar portion captured by the Cassini spacecraft during the 31st Titan flyby ( T30 ) on May 12, 2007.
The radar view on the right is the image used to produce the virtual snapshot above. The portion is centered, roughly, at 70 degrees north latitude and 310 degrees west longitude and it is about 270 km long ( around 169 miles ) by 160 km wide ( around 100 miles ). The snapshot is supposed to be taken from the arrow as shown on the radar view.
The dark area on the radar view is interpreted as a liquid area since it is uniform and dark which means that it completely ( or almost completely ) absorbs the radar signal. On the other hand, the brighter area indicates rough topographic features like hills, valleys or rivers. The brighter portions are interpreted as the higher peaks on the terrain. The landscape generator translates darker regions into lower elevation topography and brighter regions into higher elevation topography.
The radar view doesn't give any significant clue upon the height of the hills or mountains. On this artistic view, the depth of the pool along the shoreline is about 5 meters, the icy hills don't exceed 200 meters and the camera is at about 100 meters above lake level. The big lake is assumed to contain ethane molecules since a giant ethane cloud engulfing the north polar region had been identified.

© Marc Lafferre, artistic view, year 2008

Radar Image Source: NASA, JPL

© Marc Lafferre, year 2006

The image above represents a wet area of Titan in the Saturn facing hemisphere at high latitudes towards the south pole. It is currently summer and the region is in a rainy period. It has just undergone what is comparable to a tropical storm on Earth. Due to the little amount of solar energy received, the process of cloud formation is very slow. But when the clouds reach a certain point of mass and density, they release the hydrocarbon compounds in a very sudden way as speculated Ralph Lorenz ( monsoon events). The high concentration of methane in Titan's atmosphere, especially near the soil, suggest that Titan seas, lakes or oceans are made up of methane. Nevertheless, Titan harbors a complex organic chemistry which involves other hydrocarbon molecules such as ethane, acetylene, hydrogen cyanid, etylene and more complex hydrocarbon constituents. Hence, the possibility of an ethane sea has been advanced and it can't be ruled out at today's point of knowledge.

© Marc Lafferre, year 2006

The image above represents "Ontario Lacus", a giant lake spotted in Titan's south pole by the VIMS ( Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer ) onboard the Cassini spacecraft. This lake or sea is around 230 km long. As the south pole is currently tilted towards the Sun ( Summer period ), the region absorbs a relatively high amount of energy compared to the winter hemisphere ( northern hemisphere ). As a result, the evaporation process of organic compounds ( methane, ethane or acetylene) is higher. And this phenomenon explains well the presence of the cloud formations identified in the south pole by the infrared camera of the Cassini probe. It is very likely that Ontario Lacus is a primary source for those rapidly dissipating formations of clouds.

Lightning on Titan

This rendering shows flashes of lightning on Titan lowering the opacity of the atmosphere so that the disk of Saturn can be briefly seen through the red haze from the surface of Titan.For a Titanian observer, Saturn appears 11 times larger than the Moon of the Earth as seen from the surface of our planet and Saturn is also much more reflective than our moon with an albedo close to 50% compared to an albedo of 12% for the Satellite of the Earth.

Image source: Marc Lafferre, year 2005