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The Cassini-Huygens Visit to Saturn pp 357–385Cite as

Titan observations by the Cassini Orbiter

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Abstract

Because Titan orbits a planet, it is officially a satellite. But it resembles a planet itself in some fascinating ways. Its size, for one thing: Titan is bigger than the planet Mercury. And it has an atmosphere even denser than Earth’s, which is most unusual for a moon.3 In fact, as mentioned in Chapter 9, if Titan had been a bit warmer, it might look a lot like Earth today. Toby Owens called Titan the Peter Pan moon, the one that never grew up. It has been frozen in its primeval state for billions of years.

“Unveiling Titan is like reading a mystery novel.” – JPL Director Charles Elachi 1

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    Michael Meltzer

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Meltzer, M. (2015). Titan observations by the Cassini Orbiter. In: The Cassini-Huygens Visit to Saturn. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07608-9_14

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