Titan has a lot of modern meanings, usually to do with being big or powerful.
It also is found in TV shows, company names and really too many places to count.
Including a moon belonging to Saturn.
Titan is a medium sized moon, but it is Saturn’s largest.
Making you wonder why you would call this small moon titian, especially when most other
moons and planets are named after specific ancient gods…
Well in this video we are going to see where titian got its name!
Before we continue though I want to give a shout out to Mr Emerald Banana who has been
asking for this video for quite a while!
Titan was discovered on March 25, 1655, by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens.
Huygens was inspired by Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's four largest moons in 1610.
Christiaan, with the help of his older brother, began building telescopes around 1650 and
discovered the first observed moon orbiting Saturn with one of the telescopes they built.
It was the sixth moon ever discovered, after Earth's Moon and the Galilean moons of Jupiter.
Naming Huygens named his discovery (Luna Saturni),
the Latin for "Saturn's moon", but the discovery of four more moons of Saturn between 1673
and 1686, astronomers fell into the habit of referring to these and Titan as Saturn
I through V (with Titan then in fourth position).
This is a bit like how, if you remember in Star Wars a new hope, the death star was moving
to attack the rebel base on Yavin 4 – which was the 4th moon of the planet Yavin.
Titan did not stay called Saturn IV as with new discoveries and better telescopes astronomers
changed its name to Saturn 2 and 6, before deciding that they should stop with this confusing
numbering system.
John Herschel, an astronomer and the son of the famous William Hershel who discovered
2 of Saturn’s other moons, including Mimas which looks suspiciously like the death star…
decided that the moons needed to be named.
John suggested that they be named after the titans of Greek and Roman mythology because
Saturn was roman name of Cronus the most important of these titans.
In Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and
Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age.
Cronus, also spelled Cronos or Kronos, in ancient Greek religion, male deity who was
worshipped by the pre-Hellenic population of Greece but probably was not widely worshipped
by the Greeks themselves; he was later identified with the Roman god Saturn.
In Greek mythology Cronus was the son of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth), being the youngest
of the 12 Titans.
Cronus took over from his father, and fathered many of the Greek gods we know such as Poseidon,
hades and Zeus.
Cronus was scared of his children though and swallowed them -apart from Zeus who was hidden
by his mother, because Cronus’ parents foretold that he would be overthrown by one of them
– which turned out to be Zeus.
Cronus was then either imprisoned in the underworld or became a king in the afterlife, known as
Elysium depending on the story.
And so, as a quick summary Titan was discovered in 1655
Titan was originally called Saturn’s moon, but was renamed when new ones were discovered
Titans name was changed to names like Saturn 2,4 and 6
Titan was then named by John Herschel in the mid-1800s
And titan is named after the race that Saturn/Cronos was a part of in Greek mythology.