Moons of Saturn

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Moons of Saturn
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Moons of Saturn
The relative masses of Saturn's moons. At 96,
Titan dominates the system. The six mid-sized
moons constitute 4, and all small moons together
just 0.01. (Mimas and the other moons smaller
than Enceladus are invisible at this scale.)
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Titan Visits

• Pioneer 11 Saturn flyby 1979
• ESA/ASI/JPL/NASA mission launch 1997
• entered orbit around Saturn, July 1, 2004
• Huygens probe separated and reached Titan
  January 14, 2005 entered atmosphere and plunged
  to surface
• first landing of any probe in outer solar
  system

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Orbit to Titan
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Titan Facts
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Other facts
rotation is synchronous with orbital period
around Saturn (11) Titan has no magnetic field
(i.e. probably no conducting metallic core)
unlike Saturn that has a strong magnetic field
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Titan images
methane-containing clouds near the S. pole of
Titan
smog haze surrounding Titan
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Titan atmosphere

• Visibile light cannot escape from the veil of
  orange smog that covers Titan's surface
• The moon's dry cold atmosphere causes a 300 km
  thick layer of smog to build up.
• The smog, just like on Earth, forms when
  sunlight interacts with hydrocarbon molecules.

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Organic compounds from methane
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Titan What is Special?

• long streaks on surface, some 20 km wide
  (volcanic ridges?),
• underground ocean (water?, with extremophiles?),
  
• very smooth surface with few craters (young,
  with mushy layer?)

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Surface smooth with few craters
relatively young surface
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Titan Views
This view of Titan's south polar region reveals
an intriguing dark feature that may be the site
of a past or present lake of liquid hydrocarbons.
A red cross below center in the scene marks the
pole. The brightest features seen here are
methane clouds.
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Titan Views
artists conception of surface of Titan rocky
surface imaged from Huygens lander
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Hubble Telescope - Surface Reconstruction
From October 4 to 18, 1994, the Hubble Space
Telescope Planetary Camera took 53 images of
Titan at wavelengths ranging from the ultraviolet
to the near-infrared. Fourteen of those images
have been used to make the first albedo map of
Titan's surface
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JPL Movie of Titan
http//saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/flash/Titan/
index.html
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Saturns second-largest moonRhea
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This artist's conception provided by NASA shows
the ring of debris that may orbit Saturn's
second-largest moon, Rhea, shown at left. These
new observations, detected by the Cassini
spacecraft suggest Saturn's second-largest moon
may be surrounded by rings, possibly the first
time a ring system has been found around a
moon. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL/JHUAPL)