- 2898 - SATURN - TITAN moon - Christiaan Huygens? Just like Galileo did you too can see the four moons of Jupiter using your backyard telescope. On a good seeing night you can also see the largest moon of Saturn, Titan. Titan is 3,450 miles in diameter. Our Moon is 2,160 miles in diameter. So, Titan is 60% bigger than our Moon and 1/7th the size of Earth.
-------------------- 2898 - - SATURN - TITAN moon - Christiaan Huygens?
- Titan is orbiting 758,700 miles above Saturn, taking 30 years to complete on orbit. It rotates on its axis every 16 days. Our Moon is 239,000 miles away, orbits every 29.5 days, and rotates once per revolution so the same side is always facing us.
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- Titan is the largest of the some 30 moons around Saturn. It is believed to be the only moon in the solar system to be able to hold on to a dense atmosphere. Titan is almost twice (190%) as massive as our Moon.
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--------------------------- 14*10^22 kilograms to 7.35*10^22 kilograms = 190%
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- Titan’s dense atmosphere is believed to be similar to Earth’s atmosphere that existed 4 billion years ago, before the biological activity (the ocean’s algae) forever altered the composition of the air around our planet.
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- Titan’s atmosphere is thick and opaque, rich in nitrogen, methane and other hydrocarbons. The atmosphere is thick because there is 10 times more air above its surface than Earth’s.
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- Titan’s atmosphere is 90% nitrogen. This nitrogen was produced by the breakdown of ammonia (NH3) by the Sun’s ultraviolet light. The hydrogen is too light a gas for Titan to retain so it has leaked off leaving the pure nitrogen in the atmosphere. Methane (CH4C2H6) is the second most abundant gas.
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- Again sunlight’s interaction with the methane has produced a variety of other carbon-hydrogen compounds: ethane (C2H6), acetylene (C2H2), ethylene (C2H4), propane (C3H8). If you are ever on Titan don’t light a match.
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- Ethane condenses like raindrops in the atmosphere falling to the surface as a liquid. Rivers and lakes may exit on the surface as liquid ethane.
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- The surface temperature on Titan is very, very cold, -288 F. Water at that temperature would have the composition of rock. Normal gases would be liquefied and could fill entire oceans.
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- To learn what Titan’s surface was really like we sent the Cassini spacecraft on a mission to Titan. It was launched in 1997 and took a 7 year journey to reach Titan. Aboard the spacecraft was the Huygens probe that was launched from the Cassini to hit the Titan surface. The probe landed Christmas day in 2004. It landed with a “splat“. Like landing in the mud flats off San Francisco Bay.
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- The Titan mission took 20 years in development. The journey alone was seven years. Then the probe had only 1.5 hours to gather data on the atmosphere and send it back to Cassini to relay back to Earth. The probe was traveling 14,800 mph at 789 miles altitude above Titan when it hit the atmosphere.
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- The dense atmosphere slowed the probe down so it could land at 10 mph. It was battery powered and the batteries would soon freeze. Also Cassini would dip over the horizon out of communication range within a few hours. So, only 1.5 hours of data could be collected during the splat down.
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- While Huygens was stuck in the mud, astronomers on Earth are pouring through the data trying to learn what Titan is really like. One strange possibility is that of finding life on Titan.
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- On Earth where we are rich in oxygen and life is fueled by oxygenation. On Titan where it is rich in hydrogen life could be fueled by hydrogenation. Organisms consuming hydrogen instead of consuming oxygen.
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- There could be volcanoes on Titan. That could be a source for the methane. It could also be a source of heat that could help support certain life forms.
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- The pictures suggest that fluid flowed in channels cutting deeply into the icy crust although actual liquid oceans have not been found. Cassini will continue to orbit Saturn and flyby Titan for 4 more years. It has only completed 8 or 45 flybys planned for. October 26, 2005 is the next pass. What new things do you expect we can learn from this 24 year project.
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----------------------- About Christaan Huygens:
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- Christiaan Huygens was the astronomer who discovered Titan in 1655. He was 26 years old when his homemade telescope, 23 feet long, was used to discover the Orion Nebula, the rings of Saturn, and the moon that he named, Titan.
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- Born in 1629 in Hague, Netherlands. His father was in the Dutch government and he got a good education at the University of Leiden. He became an accomplished mathematician and published the first book on the subject of probabilities, used to predict life expectancies.
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At the time Huygens discovered Titan there were 6 known planets and 6 known satellites, including Earth and the Moon. Water clocks were used to measure time, accurate to fractions of an hour.
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- In 1656, age 27, he invented the grandfather clock. He combined Galileo’s pendulum research with a clock dial that worked off a slow falling weight. It was an accurate scientific instrument for its time.
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- The conservation of momentum was known, velocity * mass. P = m*v
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- But, Huygens extended it to the conservation of energy, velocity squared * mass.
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-------------------------------- E = m * v^2
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- He debated Newton that light was a longitudinal wave. Newton argued that it had to consist of particles because it traveled in a straight line. Huygen’s wave theory was ignored for a century on Newton’s reputation. Finally, Thomas Young in 1803 described light waves diffraction around corners.
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------------------------- Other reviews about Titan:
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- 1787 - Titan, strange moon of Saturn. Rivers and lakes of methane and a thick atmosphere make Titan unique in our Solar System.
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- 1363 - Titan is 3,200 miles in diameter orbiting Saturn in 16 days
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- 1144 - Titan’s average density is 1.88 grams/ cm^3
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- 818 - Titan’s atmosphere is similar to that on Earth some 4 billion years ago.
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- 555 - Christiaan Huygens was the astronomer that discovered Titan in 1655. He was 26 years old and used a home made telescope.
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- 1786 - See this review to learn about Enceladus one of Saturn’s smaller moons. The largest moon in the Solar System is Jupiter’s Ganymede.
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- November 11, 2020 2898
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--------------------- --- Saturday, November 14, 2020 ---------------------------
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