Titan is Saturn’s largest moon and the only moon with a thick atmosphere, a world of orange haze, methane rain and lakes of liquid hydrocarbons.
At a glance
| radius | 2,570 km (0.404 × Earth) |
|---|---|
| distance from its planet | 1.22 million km |
| one orbit | 15.9 days |
| reflects | 22% of the sunlight it gets |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with.
About Titan
Titan is larger than the planet Mercury, wrapped in a nitrogen atmosphere denser at the surface than Earth’s. Sunlight breaks down methane high in that atmosphere into an orange smog of organic molecules that hides the surface in visible light. Below, it is cold enough for methane and ethane to be liquid: they fall as rain, carve river channels and pool in lakes and seas near the poles.
Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan, and the probe named after him rode down through its atmosphere aboard the Cassini mission and landed on the surface, sending back pictures of rounded pebbles on a damp plain, the most distant landing ever made. Cassini’s radar mapped dunes, seas and mountains through the haze, and found evidence of a water ocean beneath the icy crust.
NASA’s Dragonfly, a rotorcraft lander, is planned to fly from place to place across Titan’s surface to study its chemistry.
What you see in the piece
In visible light Titan is a smooth orange ball of haze, its surface hidden, lit only by the faint sunlight reflected at Saturn’s distance. Find it orbiting well outside the rings; from another star it cannot be seen.
Questions
Does Titan have an atmosphere?
Yes, a thick one, mostly nitrogen, denser at the surface than Earth’s air. It is the only moon in the Solar System with a substantial atmosphere.
Are there lakes on Titan?
Yes. Titan has lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane, mostly near its poles, fed by methane rain.