Saturn's largest moon is the only planetary satellite in the Solar System with a dense atmosphere.
In the early 1980s, the Voyager 1 and 2 probes took the first close-ups of the permanent orange haze that hides Titan's surface.
In early 2005 the European Huygens probe parachuted through Titan's nitrogen-rich atmosphere and landed on the moon's surface while the Cassini spacecraft studied the moon from orbit. Images and other measurements from the craft show a world with riverbeds, liquid methane lakes and cryovolcanoes (ice volcanoes).
Photo: Titan with Saturn in the background taken by the Cassini probe (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
Huygens entered Titan's atmosphere at 20,000mph. The team had just one question: would it survive?
The Huygens probe entered the atmosphere of Titan at 20,000 miles per hour. The scientific team behind it had just one question: would it survive?
Professor Brian Cox explains how Titan's dense atmosphere combined with its weak gravity would mean that a rain storm on this moon of Saturn would be a very unusual experience.
Professor Brian Cox shows how a picture taken by the Cassini spacecraft proves the existence of lakes of liquid on Titan.
Sir Patrick Moore and his co-presenter Dr Chris Lintott discuss lakes discovered on the surface of Titan by the Cassini spacecraft.
Researchers describe the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft's instruments and mission. They talk about the technical challenges they faced during the Huygens probe landing in 2005.
Titan (or Saturn VI) is the largest moon of Saturn. It is the only natural satellite known to have a dense atmosphere, and the only object other than Earth for which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found.
Titan is the sixth ellipsoidal moon from Saturn. Frequently described as a planet-like moon, Titan has a diameter roughly 50% larger than Earth's moon and is 80% more massive. It is the second-largest moon in the Solar System, after Jupiter's moon Ganymede, and is larger by volume than the smallest planet, Mercury, although only about 41% as massive. Titan was the first known moon of Saturn, discovered in 1655 by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, and was the fifth moon of a planet apart from the Earth to be discovered.
Titan is primarily composed of water ice and rocky material. Much as with Venus prior to the Space Age, the dense, opaque atmosphere prevented understanding of Titan's surface until new information accumulated with the arrival of the Cassini–Huygens mission in 2004, including the discovery of liquid hydrocarbon lakes in the satellite's polar regions. The surface is geologically young; although mountains and several possible cryovolcanoes have been discovered, it is smooth and few impact craters have been found.
The atmosphere of Titan is largely composed of nitrogen; minor components lead to the formation of methane and ethane clouds and nitrogen-rich organic smog. The climate—including wind and rain—creates surface features similar to those of Earth, such as dunes, rivers, lakes and seas (probably of liquid methane and ethane), and deltas, and is dominated by seasonal weather patterns as on Earth. With its liquids (both surface and subsurface) and robust nitrogen atmosphere, Titan's methane cycle is viewed as an analog to Earth's water cycle, although at a much lower temperature.
The satellite is thought to be a possible host for microbial extraterrestrial life or, at least, as a prebiotic environment rich in complex organic chemistry with a possible subsurface liquid ocean serving as a biotic environment.
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