Concept

Titan (moon)

Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, the second-largest in the Solar System and larger than any of the dwarf planets of the Solar System. It is the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere, and is the only known object in space other than Earth on which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found. Titan is one of the seven gravitationally rounded moons in orbit around Saturn, and the second most distant from Saturn of those seven. Frequently described as a planet-like moon, Titan is 50% larger (in diameter) than Earth's Moon and 80% more massive. It is the second-largest moon in the Solar System after Jupiter's moon Ganymede, and is larger than the planet Mercury, but only 40% as massive. Discovered in 1655 by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, Titan was the first known moon of Saturn, and the sixth known planetary satellite (after Earth's moon and the four Galilean moons of Jupiter). Titan orbits Saturn at 20 Saturn radii. From Titan's surface, Saturn subtends an arc of 5.09 degrees, and if it were visible through the moon's thick atmosphere, it would appear 11.4 times larger in the sky, in diameter, than the Moon from Earth, which subtends 0.48° of arc. Titan is primarily composed of ice and rocky material, which is likely differentiated into a rocky core surrounded by various layers of ice, including a crust of ice Ih and a subsurface layer of ammonia-rich liquid water. Much as with Venus before the Space Age, the dense opaque atmosphere prevented understanding of Titan's surface until the Cassini–Huygens mission in 2004 provided new information, including the discovery of liquid hydrocarbon lakes in Titan's polar regions. The geologically young surface is generally smooth, with few impact craters, although mountains and several possible cryovolcanoes have been found. The atmosphere of Titan is largely nitrogen; minor components lead to the formation of methane and ethane clouds and heavy .

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Ontological neighbourhood
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Related concepts (44)
Europa (moon)
Europa jʊˈroʊpə, or Jupiter II, is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, and the sixth-closest to the planet of all the 95 known moons of Jupiter. It is also the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System. Europa was discovered independently by Simon Marius and Galileo Galilei and was named (by Marius) after Europa, the Phoenician mother of King Minos of Crete and lover of Zeus (the Greek equivalent of the Roman god Jupiter). Slightly smaller than Earth's Moon, Europa is made of silicate rock and has a water-ice crust and probably an iron–nickel core.
Ganymede (moon)
Ganymede, or Jupiter III, is the largest and most massive natural satellite of Jupiter as well as in the Solar System, being a planetary-mass moon. It is the largest Solar System object without an atmosphere, despite being the only moon of the Solar System with a magnetic field. Like Titan, it is larger than the planet Mercury, but has somewhat less surface gravity than Mercury, Io or the Moon. Ganymede is composed of approximately equal amounts of silicate rock and water.
Atmosphere
An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A stellar atmosphere is the outer region of a star, which includes the layers above the opaque photosphere; stars of low temperature might have outer atmospheres containing compound molecules. The atmosphere of Earth is composed of nitrogen (78 %), oxygen (21 %), argon (0.
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