Photo Agency - Astronomy - Space - Nature

> Titan's ethane ocean

Titan's ethane ocean

author: Walter B. Myers/Novapix

reference: a-sat99-00317

Image Size 300 DPI: 33 * 25 cm

Compared to the Earth, Titan is very far from the Sun's warming rays--about ten times further--and this leaves Titan a very cold world. Titan has an average surface temperature of minus 290º F. If there is any water on Titan it is frozen hard as steel, yet Titan may be the only body in the Solar System besides the Earth that harbors a liquid ocean. Titan's ocean would not be one of water, rather it would probably be composed of (very cold) liquid ethane. (On the Earth we know ethane as a colorless, odorless, nontoxic, flammable gas, a constituent of natural gas and petroleum.) If this weren't exotic enough, immediately beneath this ocean may lie hundreds of feet of frozen acetylene (a common component of welder's torches).

Keywords for this photo:

2005 - ASTRONOMY - CLOUD - ILLUSTRATION - LAKE - METHANE - SATELLITE - SATURN'S MOON - TITAN -