How
do you get to be an expert on Saturn's rings?
You
don't become an astronaut. So far, astronauts have only traveled to
Earth orbit and to the moon—far, far away from Saturn and its
rings.
Instead,
you join a team of scientists who send robotic spacecraft to the
outer planets. You make sure that those spacecraft are equipped with all sorts of machines
that can measure temperatures, radiation levels, and other
interesting data, and of course cameras.
And
you work really hard on analyzing the pictures and data you get back from the spacecraft.
Carolyn
Porco has done all this, working with NASA, JPL, and several universities to study and
interpret images and data from missions such as Cassini and the New
Horizons spacecraft bound for Pluto. (New Horizons's planned arrival
date in the neighborhood of Pluto is July 2015.) Porco has become an
expert on, not just Saturn's rings, but also on the rings of Jupiter,
Neptune, and Uranus, plus the intriguing Saturnian moon Enceladus.  |
| This painting shows what the surface of Enceladus might look like when geysers of water erupt. |
Oh...and
also Triton's polar caps, spectroscopy of Uranus, heat flow in the
interior of Jupiter, the interstellar medium...
Need
I go on? Obviously, Porco knows a lot about all of planetary science!
Carolyn
Porco has also taken the time to communicate about these discoveries
to all the rest of us. She has won quite a few awards, including several for her role as
science communicator—and she even has an asteroid (discovered by
someone else) named after her.
Watch
a Porco TED talk! Fabulous!
What
Porco said to me...
I
once heard Carolyn Porco speak, in person. She talked about the
genuinely fascinating discoveries made by Cassini, but what I
remember most is how she ended her talk. Porco showed us the same image she ended her "This is Saturn" talk with: a total eclipse of
the sun by the planet Saturn. The rings showed up in glorious backlit
splendor. And then Porco showed us the tiny blip on the photo that
was our Earth. She said something like, “If you ever get
discouraged about society, about people, about humans, remember this
photo, and remember that we are the species that did this! We are the species that built the machines
that took this picture of our planet!”
After
the talk, I went up to Carolyn Porco. I expressed my gratitude for her work and her talk, and Porco autographed a beautiful color
print copy of that glorious photo. I absolutely love it!
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on this date:
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