Stunning Saturn in images
See Saturn with new eyes at Vernon Memorial Lecture on Oct. 15
1:04 p.m., Sept. 17, 2014--Images of Saturn, its spectacular rings and icy moons, are bound to elicit some cosmic awe at the upcoming Harcourt C. (Ace) Vernon Memorial Lecture at the University of Delaware.
Carolyn Porco, leader of the imaging team for NASA’s Cassini mission, will present a sweeping tour of the ringed planet on Wednesday, Oct. 15, at UD’s Clayton Hall Conference Center. The free, public lecture, “A Decade at Saturn,” will begin at 7:30 p.m. To ensure seating, register in advance on this website.
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In the past 10 years, Cassini has been delivering valuable data, images and movies about Saturn and its 62 moons to scientists around the globe. The spacecraft’s Imaging Science Subsystem consists of a wide-angle camera for extended spatial coverage at lower resolution and a narrow-angle camera that could see a quarter from a distance of nearly 2.5 miles.
“Some of my favorite images are those in black and white, showing the shadow-draped Saturn atmosphere, the paper-thin rings, and one or two lonely little moons,” Porco says. “The multiple-world compositions are also stunning.”
The co-author of more than 115 scientific papers in astronomy and planetary science, Porco has been involved in numerous discoveries, including the recent finding of 101 geysers spewing icy particles on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. Could Enceladus be the most accessible habitable zone in the solar system outside of Earth?
Porco has received numerous awards and honors, among them the Carl Sagan Medal, presented by the American Astronomical Society for Excellence in the Communication of Science to the Public. In 2012, Time magazine named Porco one of the 25 most influential people in space.
The Vernon Memorial Lecture, held annually at UD, is sponsored by the University’s Delaware Asteroseismic Research Center and the Mount Cuba Astronomical Observatory in Greenville, Delaware. The lecture honors the late Harcourt C. (Ace) Vernon (1907-78), who was one of the observatory’s founders and the first chairman of its board of trustees.
Photo by Phil Mumford/The New York Times
Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/University of Arizona