Saturn's moon Titan runs a slow weather cycle in liquid methane instead of water. Drag the season slider below to watch clouds gather, rain fall, and the surface dry out again over a compressed Titan year.
Published figures: atmosphere ~95% nitrogen / ~5% methane; surface pressure about 1.5x Earth sea level; surface temperature about -179 C (94 K), below methane's ~112 K boiling point at that pressure, so methane stays liquid on the ground (NASA Cassini/Huygens pages, Hayes et al. 2018 Nature Geoscience).
Drag to orbit and scroll or pinch to zoom. Drag the season slider or press Auto-play.
Titan's Methane Weather Cycle 3D Explorer
Drag the season slider and watch Saturn's moon Titan run its own weather cycle - methane evaporates into clouds, clouds drift and rain, and the ground dries out again, all in liquid methane instead of water.
Cassini spent thirteen years mapping how Titan's thick nitrogen-methane atmosphere feeds this cycle. The moon's surface sits at about -179 C (94 K), just cold enough to keep methane liquid rather than gas, and one Titan year runs about 29.5 Earth years (one full trip around Saturn) - so a real evaporation-to-rain swing plays out over decades, not days. This explorer compresses that swing into a short on-screen cycle: the cloud band migrates in latitude as the season slider moves, and rain falls when a storm peak passes, then fades as the drop evaporates and the cycle restarts.
- Drag the season slider through a compressed Titan year, or press Auto-play
- Watch the cloud band migrate and rain fall near storm peaks
- Read the current cycle state plus published atmosphere, pressure, and temperature figures
- Compare with the Titan Methane Lakes sibling (where the seas and subsurface ocean sit, not how the cycle moves)
- Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom
- Runs fully in the browser with the vendored three.js engine - no account, no upload
| Figure | Published value |
|---|---|
| Atmosphere composition | ~95% nitrogen, ~5% methane |
| Surface pressure | ~1.5x Earth sea level (about 50% higher) |
| Surface temperature | about -179 C (94 K) |
| Methane boiling point at that pressure | about 112 K - above the surface temperature, so methane stays liquid on the ground |
| Titan year length | about 29.5 Earth years (one Saturn year) |
| Largest sea (Kraken Mare) | roughly 400,000 sq km |
| 2010 Cassini-observed storm | a large methane storm darkened part of the equatorial dune belt during northern spring |
| Nested methane cycles | operate on geologic, orbital, seasonal, and single-storm timescales (Hayes et al. 2018, Nature Geoscience) |
For a look at where the methane ends up rather than how it gets there, open the Titan Methane Lakes 3D Explorer - it toggles the haze to reveal the radar-mapped polar seas and a cutaway of the ice shell and subsurface ocean.
Everything renders on your device with WebGL. The 3D engine loads once (about 0.7 MB) and is cached.
This is an educational approximation, not an atmospheric general-circulation model - cloud position, storm timing, and rain amounts are schematic and compressed into a short on-screen cycle; the real cycle varies year to year across Titan's 29.5-Earth-year seasons.
Frequently Asked Questions
What drives Titan's methane weather cycle?
The same basic loop as Earth's water cycle - evaporation, cloud formation, rain, and surface flow - but running on methane and ethane instead of water, powered by sunlight and Titan's slow seasons (NASA Cassini, Hayes et al. 2018 Nature Geoscience).
How long is a Titan year?
About 29.5 Earth years - one full trip around Saturn - so a complete seasonal swing from wet to dry plays out over decades, not the compressed cycle shown in this explorer.
Why does Titan's cloud band move?
Cassini observed cloud activity shift between hemispheres as Titan's seasons change, with cloud cover concentrating near the winter pole and occasional storms reaching the equator near seasonal transitions.
Did Cassini ever see it rain on Titan?
Yes - in 2010 Cassini observed a large methane storm system that darkened part of Titan's equatorial dune belt, evidence that rain and surface wetting reach beyond the polar seas.
Why does methane stay liquid on Titan but not on Earth?
Titan's surface sits at about -179 C (94 K), below methane's roughly 112 K boiling point at Titan's surface pressure - cold enough that methane condenses and pools instead of staying a gas.
How is this different from the Titan Methane Lakes explorer?
That explorer toggles the haze and a cutaway to show where the seas and subsurface ocean sit - a fixed structure. This explorer instead scrubs through a season to show how methane moves between the atmosphere, clouds, rain, and surface over time.
Is this a general-circulation atmospheric model?
No. It is an educational explorer using published NASA and Cassini figures - cloud position, storm timing, and rain amounts are schematic teaching cues compressed into a short cycle, not a resolved atmospheric model.