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Fly me to the moon

By Daniel Smith on Mar 25, 09 08:55 AM

Ever wanted to zoom over an alien world like some kind of weird rocket-powered space bird? No? Just me then.

Anyway, data from Nasa's Cassini probe has been used to create 3D flyovers of Saturn's moon Titan. So you can at least pretend.

The maps show a landscape featuring many Earth-like features - mountains, dunes, seas, rivers, lakes and a sphinx. Wait, scratch the last one, I've said too much.

So far Cassini has mapped almost 40 per cent of the moon's surface with radar that peers through its thick atmosphere.

Titan is the only other body in our solar system other than our own planet, as far as we know, to have stable bodies of surface liquid. Not water though, liquid hydrocarbons.

It's atmosphere is also very similar to what you would have found on an early Earth.

Titan can be described as a frozen pie. Put it in the oven and you might end up with a nice toasty place to live.

Click here for more info about Cassini.

Weird Science Factoid: Men can read smaller print than women, but women can hear better. So fellas, never say anything bad under your breath, just write it down really small.

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1 Comments

Fastfingers said:

Looks like my back garden, where once plants thrived but now is marshland.

Authors

Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.

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