At first glance, Titan seems similar to the Earth. It is significantly larger than our own moon and is the only object in our solar system, other than the Earth, known to have seas of liquid on its surface. It is also known to experience rain, wind, volcanos, plate tectonics and other phenomenon similar to Earth under it’s thick atmosphere. Because the nitrogen-methane cloud cover is so dense however, Titan is colder than Antarctica.

For 10 years NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has been observing Saturn and its 62 known moons. In the latest round Cassini photos of Titan, astronomers noticed something that wasn’t there before. The scientific term for the object is “transient features” but the scientists are referring to it as Titan’s “Magic Island”. It is not immediately clear what the object is but researchers do know that it wasn’t there in the last round of photos.

The object was found using a technique called flipping. Flipping is pretty much what it sounds like. The astronomers took the set of data that Cassini sent on July 10, 2013 and flipped between the new set of images and older sets. Using this technique, the human eye is naturally drawn to differences between the images.

Prior to the July 2013 images, that region of Titan’s sea “Ligeia Mare” had shown no features, including waves.

“This discovery tells us that the liquids in Titan’s northern hemisphere are not simply stagnant and unchanging, but rather that changes do occur. We don’t know precisely what caused this ‘magic island’ to appear, but we’d like to study it further,” said Jason Hofgartner, a Cornell University graduate student in the field of planetary sciences, in a statement.

Hofgartner is the lead author of a paper on the discovery which will appear in the June 22 edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.

The researchers note that Titan’s northern hemisphere is currently transitioning from spring to summer which gives researchers 4 possible reasons for the appearance of the Magic Island.

It is possible that winds on Ligeia Mare could have fooled the radar imaging system and created a ‘ghost island’. It is also possible that as the seasons and temperatures change that gasess could rise from the sea floor and create bubbles which would appear as a solid object on radar. As temperatures change it is also possible that solids, such as ice, formed by a winter freeze could have risen to the surface. The final possible cause listed by researchers is suspended solids, which are neither sunken nor floating, are being reflected like silt in a terrestrial delta.

“Likely, several different processes – such as wind, rain and tides – might affect the methane and ethane lakes on Titan. We want to see the similarities and differences from geological processes that occur here on Earth. Ultimately, it will help us to understand better our own liquid environments here on the Earth,” said Hofgartner.