Washington - Titan, the fascinating moon of Saturn known for its dense atmosphere and layer of clouds may have a big ocean of water and ammonia lying deep below its surface, scientists reported on Thursday.

Astronomers did not directly see the ocean but they told that observations done by the Cassini spacecraft suggests the existence of an ocean, maybe 60 miles beneath titan’s surface.

Titan is the 2nd largest moon in the solar system only behind Ganymede, the moon of Jupiter and it is also the largest moon of Saturn. Titan has a diameter of around three thousand two hundred miles, which is greater than that of the dwarf planet Pluto and the planet Mercury.

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Paris – Scientists have discovered immense oil resources in Titan, which is a moon of Saturn. The oil reserve of Titan is estimated to be several hundred times greater than that of earth.

An artist’s imagination of hydrocarbon pools, icy and rocky terrain on the surface of Saturn’s largest moon Titan.
Credits: Steven Hobbs

The immense reserve is detected at a location which is 1.2 billion kilometers i.e., approximately 750 million miles away from Earth, where average temperature itself will be minus 179 degrees Celsius.

Titan has several hundreds times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the available oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, said the European Space Agency (ESA).

In Titan, the ethane and methane falls from the sky in the form of rain, forming massive lakes and seas. It is believed that complex organic molecules called tholins are responsible for Titan’s oily dunes, said the ESA.

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