Christiaan Huygens: Saturn's Moon Titan

Christiaan Huygens was a Dutch scientist and mathematician born in 1629. Huygens was known for his work with early studies of the rings of Saturn and later the discovery of Saturn’s moon Titan. Huygens would grind his own lenses for his telescope and invented what is now known as the Huygenian eyepiece. He was also known for his work as a physicist, probabilist, and horologist. Placing two plano lenses in a telescope, separated by an air gap, creates the Huygenian eyepiece. The lenses should have the plane sides facing the eye. These eyepieces are best used in long focal length telescopes. These lenses are no longer used today but during Huygens’ time, they were innovative. Huygens and his brother Constantijin created their
It was attached to the Cassini probe that orbited Saturn until 2017. Huygens was the first and only probe to ever land on Titan. The probe discovered what looked like pebbles of water ice, which was covered in a haze of methane around the landing site. The video from the landing showed large bodies of liquid, which were later determined to be hydrocarbon by the Cassini probe. It was speculated that the surface is made up of sand like material made of ice or now. The temperature at the landing sight was determined to be about -290 degrees Fahrenheit. The Huygens probe discovered a lot of new data and information about Titan that has since been
The probe sent back information about the composition of the rings as well as images. Through the images it can be seen that these rings are not smooth, in fact, there are spots where huge clumps stick out. Along with information about Saturn’s rings, Cassini observed the huge jet stream that occupies Saturn’s north pole. It was discovered that there is a huge hurricane at the center of this jet stream. The hurricane has an eye that is about 50 times larger than any hurricane on Earth (Kohler, 2015). During its final orbits around the planet, Cassini got close to this storm and there is hope that more data will reveal more about this anomaly. During the mission, 7 moons were discovered orbiting Saturn, some of which are in the rings. Getting a spacecraft so close to this far out planet led to many discoveries that have both confirmed and debunked some commonly believed theories. It has led scientists to rethink what they know about this area of