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Titan Discovery Day
"Deep in the shady sadness of a vale,
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair."
~Hyperion, John Keats, 1818
Astronomical tartan alert! Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, was discovered today on March 25, 1655, by Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, whose work was inspired both by Galileo’s 1610 discovery of Jupiter’s four largest moons and by his own improvements to telescope design.
Today, we know that Saturn is orbited by at least 146 moons, over 50 of them officially named—quite apart from the hundreds of smaller moonlets embedded within its rings.
Titan stands out not only as Saturn’s largest moon but also as the second-largest in the entire Solar System, even surpassing the planet Mercury in size.
Remarkably, it is the only moon known to possess a substantial atmosphere.
Many of Saturn’s moons take their names from the Titans of Greek mythology—the pre-Olympian deities born of Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth), and kin to Cronus.
Titan itself is a fascinating world of water ice over a rocky core, with a surface marked by liquid hydrocarbon lakes, cryovolcanic vents, and contrasting regions of bright and dark terrain shaped in part by impact cratering.
This tartan reflects Titan’s striking landscape and atmosphere. Designed for Charles Cockell of University of Edinburgh, it celebrates science and exploration of Saturn’s largest moon.
Its colours tell Titan’s story: brown for the hazy methane-rich atmosphere, dark brown for complex hydrocarbons and methane lakes, white for water ice, blue for a hidden subsurface ocean, and green for the potential building blocks of life and future exploration. 💛 🤎 💙 💚 🤍 🌕 🔭 🪐
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, was discovered in 1665 by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens.
Originally named Saturni Luna, the name Titan, and the names of all seven satellites of Saturn then known, came from John Herschel (son of William Herschel, discoverer of two other Saturnian moons, Mimas and Enceladus). He suggested the names of the mythological Titans, brothers and sisters of Cronus, the Greek Saturn. In Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age.
Titan in particular is of interest to researchers because of its potential for life unlike anything we see elsewhere but on Earth. It is the only other place in the solar system with liquid on its surface, and it has an abundance of the types of complex chemicals necessary for living organisms.
This tartan was designed on behalf of Charles Cockell, Professor of Astrobiology, Edinburgh University to celebrate science, exploration and outreach activities associated with Saturn's moon Titan. Colours: The brown background represents the brown haze that enshrouds the moon and is a product of its methane and hydrocarbon cycle. The dark brown bands represent the formation of complex hydrocarbons on the moon and their presence on the surface. They may also represent the dark methane lakes of the moon. The white line represents water ice and its role in geological cycles on the moon. The blue line represents the subsurface ocean or the formation of transient liquid water in impact events on the moon and the astrobiological significance of chemical reactions in such environments. The green line threaded through the dark hydrocarbon band reflects the interest in Titan as a place where prebiotic compounds may have formed, the precursors to life and the use of Titan to understand organic chemistry relevant to early life on Earth. It may also represent the interaction of life with Titan in the form of robotic and human exploration.
For more spectacular images from the Cassini spacecraft, collected over 13 years, click the 2018 released photographs showing the detail of the satellite's surface as it would look without its thick atmosphere.