Tropical Storm Spotted on Saturn’s Moon Titan

A tropical storm was not what astronomers expected to see when they pointed their telescopes toward the equator of Saturn’s moon Titan last summer.

But that’s exactly what they found on this beguiling moon, home to a weather system both eerily familiar and perplexingly strange. The discovery was announced today.

In many ways Titan’s climate resembles that of Earth, but instead of a water cycle, Titan has a methane cycle. Clouds, rain and lakes all exist on Titan, but they are all made of methane. In the moon’s frigid climate, any water is frozen into rock-hard ice.