Titan is, with a diameter of 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles), Saturn’s largest moon and the second largest moon in our Solar System (only Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is larger), roughly 50% larger than our own Moon and 80% more massive. Titan orbits Saturn at a distance of about 1.2 million km (745,000 mi), taking almost 16 days to complete a full orbit. It is tidally locked with Saturn, what means that Titan always orbits with one and the same side to Saturn.

The moon receives just about 1 % of the amount of sunlight Earth gets. This cold world — the temperature at Titan’s surface is about -178 degrees Celsius (-289 degrees Fahrenheit) — is the only moon known to have clouds and a dense hazy, planet-like atmosphere, impenetrable by telescopes and cameras. Its atmospheric pressure is about 60 percent greater than the Earth’s.

Titan’s climate, including wind and rain, creates surface features similar to those of Earth, such as sand dunes, rivers, lakes, seas and deltas, and is dominated by seasonal weather patterns as on Earth. With its liquids (both surface and subsurface) and robust nitrogen atmosphere, Titan’s methane cycle is viewed as an analog to Earth’s water cycle, although at a much lower temperature.

The moon is primarily composed of water ice and rocky material. Although mountains and several possible ice volcanoes have been discovered, Titan is rather smooth with just few impact craters. Its surface is geologically young, between 100 million and 1 billion years old. Geological processes like volcanism and wind may have reshaped its surface.