Titan
What is Titan?
Moons· Diameter 5,150 km. The only world beyond Earth with liquid on its surface — rivers and lakes of methane under a thick nitrogen sky. NASA's Dragonfly will fly here in 2034.
📍 Visible from where you are right now — computed in your browser
bearing · altitude · rise time · best time tonight
The orbit of Titan at this moment: https://nowsky.org/solar/orbit?fw=moon:saturn:titan&sp=0.022 — replayed live, no login.
Orbit and size
| Diameter | 5,150 km |
|---|---|
| Parent | Saturn |
| Note | methane lakes under thick N₂ air |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Parent planet and sibling moons
Related events
- Dragonfly launch — to Titan(planned)
- Dragonfly lands on Titan(planned)
Frequently asked
- How big is Titan?
- 5,150 km.
- What is notable about Titan?
- methane lakes under thick N₂ air.
- Which planet does Titan orbit?
- Saturn.
Seasons that take 29 years, and lakes crowded into the north
Titan circles the Sun with Saturn once every 29.5 years, so a single season lasts more than seven years. When Cassini arrived in 2004 the northern hemisphere was in winter; when the mission ended in 2017 northern summer was beginning — one spacecraft watched an entire Titanian spring. Over that time the southern lakes shrank and methane clouds and rain appeared in the north.
That most of the methane lakes crowd around the north pole is explained by these long seasons and the eccentricity of Saturn's orbit: southern summers are short and intense, evaporation is fast, and the methane migrates north to accumulate slowly through the long northern summer. The largest lake, Kraken Mare, rivals the Caspian Sea in area, and Dragonfly, due to arrive in 2034, lands in the equatorial region to study the dry side of the cycle.
The moon in depth
Titan is the only moon with a thick atmosphere — 1.5 Earth atmospheres of mostly nitrogen — beneath which methane plays water's role: methane clouds, methane rain, methane rivers draining into polar methane lakes.
In 2005 ESA's Huygens probe made the most distant landing in history, 1.4 billion km from the Sun, photographing river networks on descent and rounded water-ice pebbles at touchdown. NASA's Dragonfly rotorcraft, slated to launch in 2028, will fly Titan's skies outright.
At −179 °C, Titan is a natural laboratory of prebiotic chemistry. Zoom into the Saturn system in the orbit view and find it on its 16-day lap.
Titan's next visitor is a helicopter: NASA's Dragonfly launches in 2028 to arrive in 2034 — a nuclear-powered octocopter hopping tens of kilometers between sites to sample the surface chemistry. Thick air and light gravity make Titan far easier to fly in than Earth; by some calculations a human could get airborne there flapping strap-on wings.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.