World

Titan

Titan is Saturn’s biggest moon, under thick orange haze, with methane lakes; Huygens landed there in 2005, about 5 150 km across.

Key facts

Diameter

5 150 km

Goes round

Saturn

See it from here

Not by eye: Titan is magnitude 8.2 at its brightest, so it takes a small telescope or strong binoculars, and Saturn’s glare beside it makes even that hard.

How the map draws it

Its surface is a near-infrared map made through the haze, tinted and softened; in visible light the haze hides the ground · lit as a camera exposed for its own sunlight would show it · seen from far off it is a light at its computed brightness: the glow is how a camera records a point too bright to resolve · its haze is drawn at its measured height, and its colour is illustrative.