New maps of Saturn's moon Titan revealed large patches of trace gases shining near the north and south poles.

The regions are shifted off the poles, to the east or west, so that dawn is breaking over the southern region while dusk is falling over the northern one, according to NASA.

The pair of patches were found by a NASA-led international team of researchers investigating the chemical make-up of Titan's atmosphere.

"This is an unexpected and potentially groundbreaking discovery," said Martin Cordiner, an astrochemist working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the lead author of the study. "These kinds of east-to-west variations have never been seen before in Titan's atmospheric gases. Explaining their origin presents us with a fascinating new problem."

The mapping comes from observations made by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a network of high-precision antennas in Chile. At the wavelengths used by these antennas, the gas-rich areas in Titan's atmosphere glowed brightly.

The researchers were able to acquire spatial maps of chemicals in Titan's atmosphere from a "snapshot" observation that lasted less than three minutes, all thanks to ALMA's sensitivity.

In the newly released study, the researchers mainly focused on two organic molecules: hydrogen isocyanide (HNC) and cyanoacetylene (HC3N), both of which are formed in Titan's atmosphere, according to NASA. At lower altitudes, the HC3N appears concentrated above Titan's north and south poles. These findings are consistent with observations made by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Researchers were surprised when they compared the gas concentrations at different levels in the atmosphere. At the highest altitudes, the gas pockets seemed to be shifted away from the poles. These off-pole locations are unexpected because the fast-moving winds in Titan's middle atmosphere move in an east-west direction, forming zones similar to Jupiter's bands, though much less pronounced. In each zone, the atmospheric gases should be thoroughly mixed, according to NASA.

The researchers don't have an explanation for these findings yet.

"It seems incredible that chemical mechanisms could be operating on rapid enough timescales to cause enhanced 'pockets' in the observed molecules," said Conor Nixon, co-author of the new paper. "We would expect the molecules to be quickly mixed around the globe by Titan's winds."

The scientists now plan on conducting further studies to investigate why this phenomenon occurs. This means that there will be further observations using ALMA.

The findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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