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Titan is Saturn's largest moon (satellite). It is the only natural satellite with a dense atmosphere and a planet other than Earth with clear evidence of liquid on the surface.
Titan is the sixth moon of Saturn. It is 50 percent larger in diameter than Earth's Moon and 80 percent larger than the Moon. It is the second largest moon in the Solar System after Jupiter's moon Ganymede and is 40 percent larger than the smallest planet Mercury. Titan was discovered by the Dutch astronomer Christine Higgins in 1655 Titan was the first moon of Saturn to be discovered and the fifth moon of another planet to be discovered.
Amazing Facts About Titan
- It rains here, just like on our own planet.
- Saturn surpasses Titan in mass by 4227 times.
- The size of this moon exceeds the size of Mercury.
- The photo of Titan’s surface made by Huygens lander
- The gravity on Titan is 7.2 times less than on Earth.
- Titan has an estimated radius of 1600 miles (2,574.7km).
- Titan has an average temperature of approximately -180°c.
- Along with Ganymede, Titan is actually larger than the planet Mercury!
- The automatic interplanetary station “Cassini” took 7 years to get here.
- Titan makes one revolution around its mother planet in 16 standard days.
- Titan is constantly facing Saturn with the same side as the Moon facing Earth.
- Titan is the only moon in our solar system that has a thick, substantial atmosphere.
- Titan was discovered by Christian Huygens, a Dutch astronomer and physicist, in 1655.
- The largest of these craters is named Menrva, and has a diameter of 270 miles (440km).
- Titan is almost twice as massive as our own Moon. Its mass is 80% more than that of it.
- Titan orbits Saturn at a massive distance of more than 886 million miles (1.4 billion km).
- It takes Titan 16 days for it to complete one full trip around Saturn because of the planets huge size.
Interesting Facts About Titan Moon
- Titan is the largest of all the moons of Saturn, as well as the second-largest moon in the Solar System.
- This makes Titan is the largest of Saturn’s moons, and the second largest moon of them all after Ganymede.
- Plenty of scientists consider Titan a more promising celestial body in terms of colonization than even Mars.
- Titan takes it’s name from Greek mythology. The Titans were essentially the Gods before the Olympians (Zeus etc).
- Saturn has a powerful radiation belt. But the atmosphere of Titan protects the surface from radiation well enough.
- The sky here is not blue, as on our planet, but brown. This color is due to the presence of methane in the atmosphere.
- Rains on Titan happen at the poles only at the poles usually. Sometimes it’s raining in the equatorial area, but rarely.
- Titan’s surface is estimated to be between 100 million and a billion years old, making much of it younger than other moons.
- Winds in the atmosphere of Titan blow continuously, but their direction gradually changes, it takes about 14.5 years. Then the cycle repeats.
- It’s the only one (except for the Earth) celestial body in the Solar System in which the presence of liquid and surface is reliably established.
- This moon has a relatively young surface, which has many different geological objects on it, including craters, cryovolcanoes and many mountains.
- From 95 to 98% of the Titan’s atmosphere consists of nitrogen. For comparison, in the Earth’s atmosphere, nitrogen accounts for about 78% of the volume.
Facts About Titan Atmosphere
- The atmosphere of Titan is primarily made up of nitrogen. This is more common with objects in the Oort cloud, which suggests it may have originated there.
- A spacecraft called Dragonfly will begin its long journey to Titan in 2026. Its main task will be a search for extraterrestrial life on this moon of Saturn.
- Titan is wrapped in a solid cloud cover because of such a high density of the atmosphere, and it is impossible to see its surface from space in the visual range.
- Titan receives very little sunlight because of the distance from the Sun. But we can’t say that’s dark there because light reflected from Saturn is quite enough.
- Powerful hurricanes can occur here time to time. They are a danger to potential colonists, as the high density of the atmosphere gives them a huge destructive power.
- Titan has lakes, rivers, and seas that are mostly made up of liquid ethane. On Earth, ethane is present as a gas, but here it is liquid due to extremely low temperatures.
- Science believes that there are layers of water ice hundreds of miles thick between the solid core, which accounts for about 70% of the diameter of Titan, and its surface.
- The hydrocarbon lake Ligeia Mare located near the North pole of Titan has an area of about 38,000 mi² (100,000 km²). This is 2.5 times the area of the Sea of Azov on Earth.
- The surface area of Titan reaches 32 million mi² (83 million km²). This is a bit more than half of the total landmass area of the Earth – 58 million mi² (149.9 million km²).
- It is not tilted relative to its axis. Despite this, there is a change of seasons here – as many as 4 seasons, just like on Earth. Each of them lasts about 7 standard years.
- The first close-up photos of Titan were taken in 1980 by a passing Voyager 1. Now Voyager 1 continues to move away from us, it has entered interstellar space back in 2012 already.
Facts About Titan Saturn's Moon
- The existence of water ice on the surface of Titan is quite possible. Unlike Mars, where ice immediately evaporates bypassing the liquid aggregate state, due to extremely low pressure.
- There’s water here! According to some estimates, water ice accounts for about 50% of the total mass of Titan. The presence of water means that it can be decomposed into oxygen and hydrogen.
- In 2005, the Huygens lander separated from the Cassini interplanetary station and made a soft landing on the surface of Titan. This is the only landing on a celestial body in the outer Solar System by now.
- Unlike most other moons, Titan doesn’t have large impact craters. It is likely that meteorites either miss it completely, being captured by the gravity of Saturn, or burn up in its dense atmosphere before reaching the surface.
- There’s an ocean of liquid water at a depth of about 62 miles (100 km) below the surface of Titan. However, the water in it is characterized by extreme salinity, and more like brine. In such conditions, the emergence of life is considered unlikely.
- In terms of atmospheric density, Titan is second only to Venus among all the planets in the Solar System and their moons. Its atmosphere extends 400 km into space, and the atmospheric pressure near the surface is 1.5 times higher than that on our planet.
- Active cryovolcanoes have been found here. This explains the resupply of methane in the atmosphere, which would otherwise have been converted by solar radiation long ago. Several cryovolcanoes have already been detected, they spew a mixture of water and ammonia.
- The temperature near the surface here is almost the same at the equator and at the poles because of the very dense atmosphere, combined with the distance from the Sun. It is about -290 F °(-179.5 °C), and at different points of the surface, the temperature difference does not exceed 3-5 degrees.
- When the Sun turns into a red giant billions of years later and burns the inner planets, it will become much warmer on Titan, and the average temperature will be about -95 °F (-70 °C). However, the warm period won’t last long, only a few million years, after which the Sun will begin to shrink, cooling down and turning into a white dwarf.
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