"Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, was discovered in 1655 by Christiaan Huygens… It is the only moon in our solar system to have a dense atmosphere – so dense that, in combination with its limited gravity, humans on Titan could fly by just flapping their arms...
Not until the flyby, in 2004, of the Cassini-Huygens mission could scientists confirm… that Titan is the only heavenly body (save Earth) to contain large liquid surfaces – or seas, as non-astronomers would call them…
[Peter] Minton used the data at the JPL to create this map of Titan’s Unnamed Methane Sea… The many rivulets and islets make it look like a nice lake to vacation at, until you remember that there’s something unpleasant in the air there… A shame: how nice it must be to flap your arms and fly over the Superior-sized lake. But then again, the sunlight hardly penetrates Titan’s cloud cover, so you wouldn’t see much. And the average temperature is -180°C (-290°F). Can we go home now?"
(text and image from the interesting Strange Maps website)
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