(Image courtesy NASA/JPL/USGS.)

It's long been speculated that there are large bodies of liquid methane on Saturn's largest moon, and now radar images obtained by the Cassini spacecraft last July show “definitive evidence for the presence of lakes on the surface of Titan.”

There are lakes on Titan!

And here one can't help but wonder what if J.M.W. Turner had hitched a ride on Cassini and then parachuted down with the Huygens probe, and who is frantically now trying to finish the last in his Titan watercolor series. What if in addition to color tinted radar imaging data, Nature puts on its cover Turner originals that look something like...this?


(J.M.W. Turner, Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth, exhibited 1842, Tate Gallery.)

Waves breaking by Jupiter's gravity. Mists of methane churning violently in subzero temperature. Turbulent, tempest torn, as dynamic as our own terrestrial hydrology.

But then later we learn that Caspar David Friedrich had, too, bummed a free ride. He gives us an entirely different vision of Titan's landscape.


(Caspar David Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea, 1808-10, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.)

Are we suppose to see God amongst these vast methane seas? Has He somehow been transported from His earthly domicile and forced upon an alien landscapes?

And lo! There's Hiroshi Sugimoto as well.


(Hiroshi Sugimoto, Aegean Sea, Pilion, 1990, private collection.)

Have they all been hired by NASA as Artists-in-Extraterrestrial-Residence?