What big mountains you have

I was doing my nightly check of sciencedaily.com before bed and the article entitled Mountains Discovered on Titan, Saturn's Largest Moon piqued my interest. Unfortunately it was quickly overshadowed by the ultra-sassy photo accompanying it:

BYU professor Jani Radebaugh stands in front of an image of Titan taken with the Cassini Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument. "Bright features generally correspond to features of high topography, such as the mountains seen by the Radar instrument, and dark materials generally correspond to large dune fields made of organic particles," Radebaugh explains. "Thus, the rocky highlands are interspersed among the sand 'seas,' similar to Earth's continents and oceans." (Credit: Image courtesy of Brigham Young University)

While the article was extremely interesting and, after further reading, a giant step forward in understanding just how Earth was created, specifically in relation to the creation of Utah's mountains, I couldn't help but wonder why professor Radebaugh was posing like she was a member of the cast of Gossip Girl. If this is one of the first times an image of Titan was introduced into NASA's studies, why would we not see a picture of, oh I don't know, Titan?

Tomorrow we'll find a photo of the BYU professor clad in a cute tennis frock serving a three-love match on Saturn's rings. The day after that, we'll see Professor Radebaugh snowboarding through ice on Mars. The next day, perhaps, modeling a Victoria's Secret Canterbury nightdress while lounging in the ethereal gas giant of Uranus.

Would we ever see a picture of a male scientist posed in such a way? Nope. The typical arms folded, thoughtfully chewing on the glasses earpiece comes to mind there. In this case little Jani's Fergalicious Glamour Magazine cover pose overshadows and discredits the scientific breakthrough.