Introduction to Astronomy August 2026

Titan: Earth’s Frozen Twin

Guest speaker: Jonathan Park

In many ways, Saturn’s moon Titan looks uncannily familiar: dunes like those in Earth’s deserts, mountains, branching river channels, rain, lakes, and seas. But here, methane takes the place of water, and frozen water stands in for solid rock. Beneath Titan’s thick orange haze lies a world near minus 180 °C, where chemistry, climate, and the possibility of life follow entirely different rules. This presentation explores how we get there, what we find, and what NASA’s Dragonfly mission hopes to discover when it arrives in the 2030s.