The Saturn System
摘要
Bigger planets get more moons, although it is the second biggest, Saturn, that has the most—more than 200 at the last count. Then, there are those disks of ice in stunning and stable orbit, all sharing, if only roughly, the same plane as the giant planet’s equator. Unlike Jupiter, with four moons much larger than the rest, Saturn has just one moon that is much bigger than the others, Titan. It’s a special one though, with flowing liquid and oily seas, so it must have cycles of evaporation and precipitation. Certainly it has dense clouds that kept the surface hidden until the Huygens lander parachuted to its surface and the Cassini spacecraft used radar to penetrate the mists and map the surface. What might the waves on those oceans sound like? Do the flowing streams make the same trickling sounds as mountain streams on Earth? At least for the moment we can only wonder.