ESP Biography

Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and one of the largest moons in the Solar System. It is covered with a thick, opaque atmosphere, as featured in a scene from the recent Star Trek movie. Scientists have only recently discovered what lies beneath the atmosphere from the explorations of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft. In this class, we examine the data collected from the spacecraft's instruments to piece together a world that appears strikingly similar to our own. But we learn that, while Titan has very Earth-like appearances, it's building blocks are entirely different.

The Cassini spacecraft has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004, and we will take a tour through some of its amazing discoveries in this course. For instance, Saturn's largest moon Titan was discovered 450 years ago and was known to have a thick smoggy atmosphere. But only in the last five years, with Cassini, have we finally learned what lies beneath that atmosphere; shockingly, it is a world very similar to Earth! There are liquid lakes made out of methane, rain falls out of the sky to form channels and erode the surface, there are mountain chains and volcanoes, and even sand dunes shaped by the wind! In addition to Titan, we will also follow Cassini to some of Saturn's other moons, as well as Saturn itself.