TITAN ADDICTION by NMLSS_VGR

Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, on March 25, 1655. It was nearly 300 years later, in 1944, when Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper discovered one of the characteristics that makes Titan exceptional: this distant moon actually has an atmosphere. Kuiper made the discovery by passing sunlight reflected from Titan through a spectrometer and detecting methane. Further telescope observations from Earth showed that Titan’s atmosphere was dense and hazy.

The first spacecraft to explore Titan, Pioneer 11, flew through the Saturn system on Sept. 1, 1979. Astronomers on Earth had previously studied Titan’s temperature, and calculated its mass, and Pioneer 11 confirmed those characteristics. Because of Titan’s extended and opaque atmosphere, scientists at the time thought (incorrectly, it turns out) that Titan might be the largest moon in the solar system. Pioneer 11 also saw hints of a bluish haze in Titan’s upper atmosphere, which scientists predicted the Voyager spacecraft would be able to see.

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