Far-Out Guide to Saturn by Mary Kay Carson

Author:Mary Kay Carson [Carson, Mary Kay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4645-0112-8
Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2011-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Engineers attach the gold, saucer-shaped Huygens probe to Cassini in 1997.

The scene from the landed probe looked strange to scientists, yet familiar. The probe had landed in a flat area littered with rocks. Low hills lined the horizon. The sky above was an orange haze. Instruments aboard Huygens reported the surface was an icy, pudding-like, wet mud. “We’re sitting on icy grains, which have the consistency of sand,” Zarnecki told reporters. Huygens had landed in a dry riverbed. Just beneath the surface was a pool of liquid methane. Methane is natural gas—the gas used in cooking stoves. Titan is so cold that its methane is chilled to liquid. Liquid methane rains down and fills the lakes on Titan. No water falls from the orange sky. On Titan’s surface, cold temperatures freeze water into rock-hard ice. It is flowing liquid methane that carves the riverbeds, lakes, and rain-washed gullies on Titan.

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