Beneath Titan's Smog

Titan looms behind Saturn’s brilliant rings and the small, battered moon Epimetheus. Saturn’s largest moon by far, Titan has mystified astronomers for more than 300 years. When the Voyager 1 probe flew by in 1980, scientists were disappointed to see nothing but a featureless orb cloaked in opaque smog. Scientists would have to wait until the Cassini mission to learn what lay beneath Titan’s thick atmosphere. “It’s been like a Jules Verne adventure come true,” Porco says. “It’s another milestone in coming to understand our cosmic neighborhood.”

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute