September 5, 2002
Some stars end in silence, some in fire, and some leave behind the raw materials for birthdays.
Voyager Views Titan's Haze
Birthday · September 5, 2002
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
Free PNG · 1080 × 1350 · No account needed
Image rights and credit requirements apply when sharing or reusing imagery.
Date & occasion only
Change the year
APOD published September 5, 2002. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Launched in 1977, 25 years ago today, the Voyager 1 spacecraft's historic tour of the outer Solar System took it past Saturn in late 1980. On November 12, 1980, Voyager 1 recorded this view looking across the edge of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, from a distance of about 22,000 kilometers. Seen in false color, the moon's hazy atmosphere appears orange with further layers of blue haze suspended above. Titan's mostly nitrogen atmosphere, denser than planet Earth's, also contains methane and is thought to be laced with more complex hydrogen and carbon compounds. The composition is likened to Earth's atmosphere before life began. Spotted by Voyager, the detached layers of haze hundreds of kilometers above the surface, along with details of Titan's atmospheric chemistry, have intrigued earth-bound researchers who have recently proposed a model that links seasonal variations in the haze, winds, and sunlight. Their model accounts for the early Voyager observations as well as subsequent studies. Further tests of the model are anticipated when the Huygens probe, carried by the saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft, enters Titan's atmosphere in 2005.