3titan

​ = media type="custom" key="4613300" =



​

THE DISCOVERY OF TITAN



**TItan was discovered in 1655. It was discovered by Christian Huygens obsrved Saturn with his telescope that was newly improved over Galileo's original telescope. That was how Christian Huygens discovered Saturn's largest moon titan.**



**Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second largest moon in the solar system, after Jupiter's moon Ganymede. It is roughly 50% larger than Earth's moon by diameter, and is larger by diameter and mass than all known dwarf planets. It is also larger by diameter than the planet Mercury, though Mercury is more than twice as massive.**

**EXPLORING TITAN**



**Way out beyond the icy rings of Saturn there's a mysterious world called Titan. The cloud-shrouded surface of this huge moon is one of the largest unexplored regions in the Solar System. Somewhere here, in the icy soup of organic molecules that coats its surface, scientists believe they will discover primitive proteins, or better still, living cells that could help them solve once and for all the mystery of the origin of life.**

**Recording Titan's doubtless spectacular landforms is best done from above, but Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere will make it difficult to get good close-up pictures from orbit. An aeroplane flying at lower altitudes would be ideal for surveying the surface, but landing to collect samples would be impossible.**
 * The cheap and simple answer is a balloon or airship. But anchoring them against the wind and generating enough downward force to dig samples from the hard surface might be a problem.**
 * This leaves a helicopter. Although on Earth these craft need huge amounts of power, according to my calculations an electrically powered helicopter is the most practical proposition for Titan. It could cover large distances, but also land exactly on top of the most interesting chemical deposits and be stable enough to drill into them. And since Titan's atmosphere is four times denser than Earth's, it is much easier for a helicopter's rotors to push against it. Better still, the moon's gravity is just one seventh of Earth's, so the craft wouldn't need to generate so much lift. All in all, a helicopter on Titan would need 38 times less power to take off than the same helicopter on Earth.**

media type="custom" key="4601250" width="624" height="541" align="center"

TITAN'S LAKES AND SEA'S

**The rivers and lakes are likely to contain ethane or methane. in a liquid form, but the liquids are said to "act like water" and are "clear" like water. Both ethane and methane are organic gases on Earth. "Dark surfaces are smooth and most likely liquid, rock, ice or organics. More than 75 radar-dark patches or lakes were seen, ranging from 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) to more than 70 kilometers (43 miles) across. Some lakes appear partly dry, while others seem liquid-filled. Some of the partly filled lakes may never have filled fully, or may have partly evaporated at some point in the past. The dry lakes have margins or rims and a radar brightness similar to the rest of the surrounding terrain, making them appear devoid of liquid," said a statement by NASA on their website.**

​ **The lakes seen by radar are clustered around the north polar region. They may be seasonal, accumulating at each pole from winter rains and drying up during the summer. Spring is approaching for Titan's northern hemisphere and some of the lakes there show singns of evaporation.​**





 ATMOSPHERE​


 * The surface of Titan is shrouded by a dense atmosphere, comprised primarily of nitrogen and methane with traces of argon and hydrocarbons. The organic (carbon-based) compounds are formed as the methane is destroyed by sunlight. The result is Titan's signature orange haze - very similar to smog on Earth, only thicker.**




 * Titan's atmosphere is actually 50% denser than Earth's, and visible light cannot penetrate it. As a result, when Voyager 1 flew past in Novemeber of 1980 and tried to take photographs, all that scientists could discern from the pictures were thick clouds and an orange haze.**

​

SURFACE​

**Titan's surface is a mystery to scientists. They do know it is not //homogenus// it is not uniform in its composition. There is much debate over whether or not the surface is comprised of dry land, oceans of hydrocarbons, or slush.

The surface temperature is around 94 K (-290 degrees Fahrenheit), which is too cold for liquid water to exist. In order for liquid water to exist on Titan, it would have to be thermally insulated underneath a layer of ice.**



[|www.planetary] .org www.solarviews.com www.lifeinuniverse.org