Slashdot Mirror
Titan's Surface Revealed
MattKeeler writes "NASA's running a story on the recent findings of Cassini, the satellite orbiting Titan, one of Saturn's giant moons. New images reveal details of the moon's surface and a variety of materials that cover it."
Ok, this is the last time I try to post a literary reference on slashdot. Don't you people read books?
Check this out. Good book. Read it.
And stop modding stuff down just because you don't get the reference.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
To see what Titan looks like we'll have to wait for Cassini to start making its closer fly-bys. I think the article said Cassini will do 45 or so fly-bys in the next 4 years and they'll get to around 600 miles away. That'll allow some very high resolution images of Titan and will be really interesting - this is still too far away to make any really revealing below-atmospheric level observations, as the atmosphere is so opaque and dense.
Those clouds of gas, as you call them, are believed to be methane, which is supposedly the primary ingredient of its atmosphere. If you could light a match on Titan, the whole moon would be engulfed in fire faster than you could say "who farted?"
Titan is believed to be one of the most inhospitable worlds in the solar system: I wouldn't go planning your vacation just yet.
But, to answer your question, from the ESA:
Diameter (atmosphere): 5550 km
Diameter (surface): 5150 km
Mass: 1/45 that of Earth
Average density: 1.881 times liquid water
Surface temperature: 94K (-180 degrees C)
Atmospheric pressure at surface: 1500 mbar (1.5 times Earth's)
Atmospheric composition: Nitrogen, methane, traces of ammonia, argon, ethane