NASA Scientists who are working on Cassini Mission have identified the tallest peak on Saturn’s largest moon – Titan which is about 3,337 meters high. The highest point on Titan is found within a trio of mountainous ridges called the Mithrim Montes. The researchers found that most of the Titan’s tallest mountains appear to be close to the equator.

All the Titan’s highest peaks are about 3,000 meters in elevation said the researchers. The study used images and other data from Cassini’s radar instrument, which can peer through the obscuring smog of Titan’s atmosphere to show the surface in detail. “It is not only the highest point we have found so far on Titan, but we think it is the highest point we are likely to find,” said Stephen Wall, deputy lead of the Cassini radar team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Some of the other peaks are in the similar height within the Mithrim Montes and a region known as Xanadu. The investigation was originally motivated by a search for active zones within Titan’s crust places where dynamic forces have shaped the landscape, perhaps in the relatively recent past.

“As explorers, we are motivated to find the highest or deepest places, partly because it is exciting. But Titan’s extremes also tell us important things about forces affecting its evolution,” said Jani Radebaugh, a Cassini radar team associate at Brigham Young University in the US. Forces of erosion, including wind, rain and runoff, slowly wear them down over time, researchers said.

The Appalachian Mountains represent much more ancient activity that produced similarly gigantic peaks long ago, which have since eroded. Cassini has found that Titan also has rain and rivers that erode its landscape, said the researchers. The fact that Titan has significant mountains at all suggests that some active tectonic forces could be affecting the surface.