Electrically charged particles stream away from Saturn's moon Titan, escaping into space in a similar way to Earth's polar atmosphere.

Titan's thick hydrocarbon haze is unique in the Solar System. Andrew Coates of University College London and his colleagues used the Cassini spacecraft to detect charged particles in Titan's uppermost atmosphere and deep space. Particles flowed away from the moon, along magnetic field lines that extended more than 17,000 kilometres from Titan.

The work explains how 7 tonnes of atmospheric molecules manage to escape from Titan every day.

Geophys. Res. Lett. http://doi.org/5jg (2015)