There are many things to see on my Postcards from Titan - some real, some imaginary - and some that might come to be... The full version features all these, the light verson just the Huygens sequence. Here´s the places and times:


Titan and Saturn

Saturn as seen from Titan - as imagined by Bonestell

When deciding to do this project, i had to start here. This scene is a homage to Chesley Bonestell, who painted it in 1946 (see this page). Of course, no one knew then what the actual conditions on Titan would be, but Bonestell did work out exactly how Saturn would look from that distance and angle... The painting is so evoking, so powerful, it has probably done more to further space exploration than any other piece of art from the 20th century. What can be seen here is only a small detail from this landscape, and i haven´t tried to duplicate the painting, just incorporate a reasonable likeness. The rest of the scene is reminiscent of the kind of "spiky moonscapes" so familiar in space art from that time period. It is also the place one will find the most varied weather conditions in Postcards...

A rare rainbow, with the sun seen through dense clouds

Weather at the Bonestell rock: although highly speculative, i couldn´t resist adding a rainbow... It can only be seen at one particular day: 20. june 2118. This i did because even though rainbows might be common in the infrared, it should be extremely rare in visible light. The color spectrum will be quite different from what we are used to here on Earth, and the arc much higher - i have tried to account for that.

The landing site

A mud-filled plain, as similar to the ESA images as possible. The strong orange color is actually toned down compared to their pictures, but it still looks intense... The topography was decided more by Celestia´s limitations than my imagination; i had to build the plain up on a plateau, to get around the infamous "atmosphere gap" bug. This model is so huge, you need to decrease the field-of-view (press ,- in Celestia) to get very close to the - in comparison - tiny probe. Else, the camera will clip your surroundings.

The Huygens landing on january 14. 2005 is included in Postcards: all models and trajectory data are courtesy of jestr at the Celestia forums. I have only re-textured the parachute, changed some naming details, and fine-tuned the Huygens flight path a little. Here´s some screenshots from the flight:


Top left: Separation from Cassini | Middle: Approaching Titan | Right: Entering the atmosphere
Bottom left: Drifting down | Middle: Landing on Titan | Right: The Huygens landed in mud

Ulrich "Adirondack" Dickmann has written a customized version of his Cassini mission CelX script for the Postcards AddOn. This will give you a guided tour of the Huygens and it´s flight, and is well worth watching.




Northeast on Xanadu, this is a small lake of liquid methane surrounded by hills. The model is inspired by Ron Miller´s beautiful work The Surface of Titan, which won second price in The Planetary Society´s art contest Imagining Titan: Artists Peer Beneath the Veil.

The lake is not a rendering of the picture, but the landscape is generally influenced by it. However, if you explore this place, you could find a spot where you might recognize a certain skyline...


Sunset over Xanadu Lake, with Saturn just over the horizon




Fast-forward to june 20. 2018 to see the proposed Titan Organics Explorer mission at Xanadu Lake. The airship moves in an eccentric, very low orbit that covers the entire scene; sync orbit with it for a nice tour!

I know next to nothing about aerodynamics or how the science package would look like, so this is very tentative - but my model does illustrate the general idea.


The Titan Organics Explorer and Saturn

The airship exploring Xanadu Lake

A blimp on Titan is just one of several alternatives: others under consideration is a balloon and a helicopter... It would launch in 2013-14, and use about four years to get there. The ship would then spend several months flying around taking samples from the ground with a sort of harpoon. I like the airship because it is more versatile than a balloon and cheaper and more low-tech than a helicopter (easier to fund, and fewer things that can go wrong). So, i built a concept model of it for Postcards. The model is more or less based on this design by Mark Robertson-Tessi and Ralph Lorenz. Go here for more on the mission concept (by JPL and the University of Arizona).