Recently it was reported that the Cassini Spacecraft had detected a flash of light from Titan, as the Sun's rays reflected off the surface of a lake on Saturn's largest Moon. Well a group of scientists are now seeking to send a "boat" to Titan in order to explore one of these lakes. It will be the first time a liquid lake will be explored beyond our Earth.

The proposed craft would splash down on Titan in one of its northern lakes of liquid methane around the year 2023. It is thought that the weather patterns of Titan are similar to that of Earth, except that the exceedingly cold temperature of the surface create lakes of hydrocarbons instead of the water seen on our planet. Nonetheless these types of studies will help us to understand the evolution of a world such as Titan, and even shed some light into the evolution of our planet.

Image Credit: Cassini Radar Mapper, JPL, ESA, NASA

Over the weekend, as severe winter weather pummeled the East cost of the United States, one of NASA's Earth Observatories was beaming images of the storm back to Earth.

In this image the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite observed the Atlantic coast of the United States on December 20, 2009 as the clouds began to dissipate. The beautiful white snow abounds across the entire landscape, where millions of people struggled to pass slippery streets. I am sometimes struck by the vision of snow from space, it brings to mind images of purity and majesty. It's just too bad that the reality of the snow is that it makes getting around so difficult.

Image Credit: NASA/Jesse Allen

The Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting Titan, one of Saturn's moons, since 2004. And during the last five years it has been looking for a phenomenon known as a specular reflection, which is simply the flash of light caused by the reflection of the Sun off of the surface of a lake.

The flash of light from Titan has been elusive because the northern hemisphere has been shrouded in darkness due to heavy clouds and wintery-like weather. But as the seasons have changed, the warmer temperatures in the north have revealed great detail about the lakes and terrain of the Moon.

These flashes are important because they give us volumes of information about the nature of the atmosphere, surface and other physical properties of Titan. Saturn's largest Moon has captivated scientists for decades because of its similarities with Earth, being the only other rocky body in our solar system thought to contain liquid reservoirs on its surface.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/DLR

A recent NASA mission to monitor the Aurora Borealis (also known as the Northern Lights), made an interesting discovery. Apparently, these brilliant "sheets" of light can occasionally collide and produce an amazing burst of light. This discovery could not have been made if it weren't for this complex system of cameras, known as the THEMIS mission. The mission consists of 5 cameras in space, as well as 20 cameras located around the arctic region.

While we have a considerable understanding of auroras and how they are created, there are still aspects of the phenomenon that we don't entirely grasp. These sorts of collisions give us significant insight into the physics that governs their existence, with these collisions being one of the greatest mysteries. Scientists believe that these collisions are caused by an atmospheric disturbance above the Earth's atmosphere in a region known as the plasma tail -- where particles of the solar wind are trapped in the Earth's magnetosphere. The more we can monitor these collisions, the more we will understand what is going on outside the Earth's atmosphere.

Image Credit: NASA