Sunday, March 25, 2007

Happy Birthday 352nd Birthday Titan!



Saturn's largest moon—Titan—was discovered on March 25, 1655 by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, and was the first satellite in the Solar System to be discovered after the Galilean moons of Jupiter. So, I guess it's not really its 352nd birthday after all, but the 352nd anniversary of its discovery. On the other hand, stars, planets, and moons don't really get a chance to celebrate their birthdays, so we'll give this one to Titan.






Titan has a lot of brothers and sisters too: Saturn has 34 known moons. Titan is one of the few moons in our solar system with its own atmosphere.

Titan itself is bigger than the planets Mercury and Pluto (in fact, didn't Pluto just get defrocked with the advent of the 10th planet?). The photograph above is, naturally, from the Cassini voyager.


Other recent All This Is That articles on the solar system:



The tenth planet a/k/a 2003 UB313
Poem: The Tenth Planet (Or An Incredible Facsimile?)

Fantastic new photos of Saturn from the Cassini-Huygens mission
N.S.A. bans photos of Saturn creatures - to avert a run on Depends incontinence products
Photograph Of Mimas, A Moon Of Saturn
---o0o---

No comments: