What is it with the different distances to Titan?

[johnharlin]

Could somebody please give me some exact distances between earth and Titan and Saturn and Titan. I'm going crazy with all the different distances. <br />The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Titan is 744 million miles from earth. The San Jose Mercury News reports that Titan is 744 million miles from Saturn which I think is impossible because I think it would take months to get from Saturn to Titan. Other reports I've read say that Titan is some 2 billion plus miles from earth. They can't all be right. What are the correct distances. And how can all these newspaper editors not check their facts. I thought that's what they are paid for.<br />

 

[claywoman]

Here is a site that can answer your question....<br /><br />http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/kids_space/distance.html

 

[CalliArcale]

Newspapers often get their facts wrong on space. I find it more amusing than irritating, and I enjoy trying to spot occurances of it. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />One thing to bear in mind is that these distances <i>are not constant</i>. Titan, Saturn, and Earth are all in motion. Earth takes 365.25 days to go around the Sun. Saturn takes 10,759.50 days (accoring to the Nine Planets). So Earth will approach and recede from Saturn many times, making the distance between them shift up to 300 million km over the course of a year. (Realistically, that would only happen if Saturn were sitting on the line described by the major axis of Earth's elliptical orbit, so the actual shift is probably somewhat less.)<br /><br />Still, 744 million miles will never be correct. Saturn orbits at 1,429,400,000 km from the Sun (on average; its orbit is also elliptical). Earth's average altitude from the Sun is 149,600,000 km. So if they're lined up (the technical term being "at opposition"), they should be about 1,279,800,000 km apart (give or take a bunch, since obviously if opposition occurs with Earth at aphelion and Saturn at perihelion, they'll be closer together -- these figures are based on their average altitudes only).<br /><br />At this scale, the distance between Titan and Saturn is negligible; consider the distance from Earth to Saturn as roughly equivalent to the distance from Earth to Titan.<br /><br />Titan orbits Saturn at an average altitude of about 1,222,000 km. Converting this into miles, this is about 759,315 miles. Taking eburacum's value from another post, Earth and Saturn are currently separated by about 1,212,400,000 km, which converts to about 753,350,433 miles.<br /><br />So the San Fransisco Chronicle is pretty close; in fact, the value may have been correct quite recently (given the relative motions of the Earth and Saturn). However, the San Jose Mercury News is wrong. They are off <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[heyo]

<i>BTW, for a funny goof, back when the Columbia accident happened, CNN was showing an informational scroll across the bottom of the screen that claimed the vehicle had been travelling fifteen times the speed of light at the time of the accident. (They meant sound, of course.) </i><br /><br />I saw that as well. Funny, yet dissapointing. I also remember when Spirit landed, some bimbo on one of the cable news channels asked the scientist if Spirit "could find the flag that the astronauts left there"..<br /><br />I think if may have been this same woman who, when doing a report on the President's new space initiative right after he'd made that speech at NASA, made a comment about "moon-based aircraft".. uh. ok.<br />Heyo

 

[vogon13]

Cassini's curving path (and therefore much longer than the straight line distance) to Saturn seems to have confused some of the media personnel. If Cassini traveled 2 billion clicks, then Saturn must be 2 billion klicks away. Well, not really, Cassini started off 'downhill' towards Venus before getting enough 'juice' to saunter all the way to Saturn. I concede it's nice to have a big space related story getting media attention, but some of the reporting has been annoying. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[robnissen]

Yup, that's it. Since Cassini traveled about 2 billion miles to get to Saturn (so that it could catch several gravity assists) the news media then assumes that Saturn must be 2 billion miles away.

 

[nopatience]

I heard Cassini took a gentle gravity boost from CNN itself!----- no really, cassini would have crash landed in that gravity well.<br />-jk <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" />