Titan is the largest of the 53 known moons orbiting Saturn. Despite its distance from the Sun, Titan is arguably one of the most Earth-like worlds we have found to date. With its thick atmosphere and complex, carbon-rich chemistry, Titan resembles a frozen version of Earth several billion years ago, before life began pumping oxygen into our atmosphere. Sensitive instruments onboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft peered through Titan’s atmosphere to obtain these false-color views of its surface. The image in the middle is of the opposite side of the moon than the other two. Cassini has revealed that Titan’s surface is shaped by rivers and lakes of liquid ethane and methane, which form clouds and occasionally rain from the sky as water does on Earth. Winds sculpt vast regions of dark dunes that girdle the equator and low latitudes. Volcanism may occur as well, but with liquid water lava versus molten rock lava here on Earth. From FETTSS Web site. (Image NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
