Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, has recently been mapped for the first time in 3D by the Cassini probe orbiting the ringed planet. This large satellite has a thick, cloudy atmosphere that hinders astronomers from directly viewing surface features on the moon until recently.
The new maps were created using a mathematical process known as splining, which joins together areas of previous topograhic maps using smooth lines.
Ralph Lorenz, a member of the Cassini radar team, said, "You can take a spot where there is no data, look how close it is to the nearest data, and use various approaches of averaging and estimating to calculate your best guess,"
Once the maps were joined by this process, features on the surface of Titan, once hidden, became apparent to researchers. These newly-discovered area included three large basins. The maps were centered on the polar regions, and only cover about 11% of the surface of the giant moon.
It is believed that these maps will help astronomers predict weather on the satellite, furthering knowledge of how atmospheres other than the Earth's behave.
Titan is the second-largest moon in the Solar system, over 1,600 miles in diameter, making it larger than the planet Mercury. This mammoth satellite also sports a thick atmosphere, including clouds. Like Earth, Titan's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen. Unlike our home world, however, the air there rich in methane. It is this gas that forms the clouds seen in the atmosphere of the Saturnian moon. Atmospheric hydrocarbons, commonly known as smog, are also a large part of this choking mixture of gases. Titan is also unique in having stable bodies of liquid on its surface - the only moon known to exhibit such a feature.
Lorenz said, "Titan has so much interesting activity - like flowing liquids and moving sand dunes - but to understand these processes it's useful to know how the terrain slopes."
In many ways, Titan would be easier to colonize than Mars, as the atmosphere is one-and-a-half times thicker than that on our own world. Oxygen to sustain animals is also available, along with nitrogen to fertilize plants. Due to the low gravity and thick atmosphere, humans could strap wings to their arms and fly above the surface of this strange, frozen moon.
