Overview The latest on Titan Building our new view of Titan Today, two and a half years after the historic landing of ESA’s Huygens probe on Titan, a new set of results on Saturn’s largest moon is ready to be presented. Titan, as seen through the eyes of Huygens still holds exciting surprises, scientists say. Revealing Titan’s rugged surface During its two and a half hour descent, the cameras on Huygens showed eager scientists on Earth spectacular regions of bright highlands with river drainages and canyons, bounded by dark plains on Titan. New information about the composition of the landing region is now ready for the public. Titan’s mysterious radio wave Huygens scored a first in 2005 by measuring the electrical conductivity of Titan’s atmosphere. The results hint at a new way to investigate the subsurface layers of Titan and could provide insight into whether or not Titan has a subsurface ocean. Dissecting the dirt on Titan Planetary scientists are a step closer to understanding the composition of the dust in Titan’s atmosphere. A decade-long programme of laboratory studies, aiming to reproduce Titan’s unique dust, or ‘aerosol’ population in specially constructed reactors, has proved invaluable. Huygens’ path to Titan Scientists now know exactly how Huygens made its way to the surface of Titan. The trajectory reconstruction is the culmination of two years of effort and is particularly valuable for a correct interpretation of the observations from all six scientific investigations on board. The way the wind blows on Titan A simulation of the winds encountered by Huygens has lead planetary scientists to believe that it’s entire atmosphere is circulating around on a conveyor belt. This huge system of moving gas transports warm air from the southern hemisphere to Titan’s north pole and back again. Last update: 10 June 2008