![]() ![]() The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.įor more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. Book the moon is always round, How to tell the public that the news is fake. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. A&w pancake price, canterbury wizards, Avenged sevenfold hail. The flyby had a close-approach distance of about 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers). The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Saturns moon, Atlas, imaged on April 12, 2017, by NASAs Cassini spacecraft. Pan is 33 kilometers (20.5 miles) across at its equator and 21 kilometers (13 miles) across at its poles Atlas is 39 kilometers (24 miles) across at its equator and 18 kilometers (11 miles) across at its poles. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera between 20. The ridges represent about 27 percent of Atlas' volume and 10 percent of Pan's volume. Pan's ridge reaches about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) at 0 degrees west longitude, and is about 1.5 kilometers (0.9 mile) high over most of the rest of the equator. Heights of Atlas' ridge range from about 3 kilometers (2 miles) at 270 degrees west longitude to 5 kilometers (3 miles) at 180 and 0 degrees. The heights of the ridges can be crudely estimated by assuming (ellipsoidal) shapes that lack ridges and vary smoothly cross the equator. Atlas shows more asymmetry than Pan in having a more rounded ridge in the leading and sub-Saturn quadrants. On Atlas, the ridge extends 20 to 30 degrees in latitude on either side of the equator on Pan, its latitudinal extent is 15 to 20 degrees. With its liquids (both surface and subsurface) and robust nitrogen atmosphere, Titan's methane cycle bears a striking similarity to Earth's water cycle, albeit at the much lower temperature of about 94 K (−179 ☌ −290 ☏).The highest resolution images of Pan and Atlas reveal distinctive "flying saucer" shapes created by prominent equatorial ridges not seen on the other small moons of Saturn.įrom left to right: a view of Atlas' trailing hemisphere, with north up, at a spatial scale of about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel Atlas seen at about 250 meters (820 feet) per pixel from mid-southern latitudes, with the sub-Saturn hemisphere at the top and leading hemisphere to the left Pan's trailing hemisphere seen at about 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel from low southern latitudes an equatorial view, with Saturn in the background, of Pan's anti-Saturn hemisphere at about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel. The climate-including wind and rain-creates surface features similar to those of Earth, such as dunes, rivers, lakes, seas (probably of liquid methane and ethane), and deltas, and is dominated by seasonal weather patterns as on Earth. The atmosphere of Titan is largely nitrogen minor components lead to the formation of methane and ethane clouds and heavy organonitrogen haze. The geologically young surface is generally smooth, with few impact craters, although mountains and several possible cryovolcanoes have been found. ![]() Much as with Venus before the Space Age, the dense opaque atmosphere prevented understanding of Titan's surface until the Cassini–Huygens mission in 2004 provided new information, including the discovery of liquid hydrocarbon lakes in Titan's polar regions. Titan is primarily composed of ice and rocky material, which is likely differentiated into a rocky core surrounded by various layers of ice, including a crust of ice I h and a subsurface layer of ammonia-rich liquid water. ![]() From Titan's surface, Saturn subtends an arc of 5.09 degrees, and if it were visible through the moon's thick atmosphere, it would appear 11.4 times larger in the sky, in diameter, than the Moon from Earth, which subtends 0.48° of arc. It is the second-largest moon in the Solar System after Jupiter's moon Ganymede, and is larger than the planet Mercury, but only 40% as massive.ĭiscovered in 1655 by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, Titan was the first known moon of Saturn, and the sixth known planetary satellite (after Earth's moon and the four Galilean moons of Jupiter). Frequently described as a planet-like moon, Titan is 50% larger (in diameter) than Earth's Moon and 80% more massive. Titan is one of the seven gravitationally rounded moons in orbit around Saturn, and the second most distant from Saturn of those seven. ![]()
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