Our Solar System Live


The Face Behind The Veil. Titan is a little larger than Mercury--the smallest major planet inhabiting our Solar System. Indeed, Titan would have been classified as a major planet in its own right if it orbited our Sun instead of Saturn. The Huygens Probe images lifted the veil from the face of this distant moon-world, revealing a youthful surface that is both smooth and relatively free of impact craters. Huygens also found that this icy, hydrocarbon-saturated moon's climate includes those heavy rains of gasoline, as well as raging, roaring winds. Some of Titan's surface features were found to be hauntingly akin to certain surface features on Earth. Have you ever had one of those days fishing where it seemed like you could do no wrong? Like everything you tried resulted in fish being caught? And not only fish being caught, but large fish being caught? This was all probably due to the moon and what phase the moon was in. That's right, something as simple as what phase the moon is in can have an effect on your fishing success. Enceladus: Enceladus has shown geysers of water that were confirmed by the Cassini spacecraft in 2005. Gravimetric data obtained from 2010 to 2011 confirmed the existence of a subsurface ocean. Even though originally it was thought to be localized, most likely in a region of the icy moon's southern hemisphere, evidence collected in 2015 indicates the subsurface ocean is actually global. Furthermore, in additon to water, these geysers from vents located near the south pole of Enceladus contain tiny quantities of salt, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and volatile hydrocarbons. Tidal flux from Saturn is apparently responsible for the melting of the ocean water, as well as the geysers.