Lifting Titan's Veil: Exploring the Giant Moon of SaturnCambridge University Press, 16.05.2002 - 260 Seiten Lifting Titan's Veil is a revealing account of the second largest moon in our solar system. This world in orbit around Saturn is the only body in the solar system with an atmosphere strikingly similar to Earth's. Titan is like a giant frozen laboratory that may help scientists understand the first chemical steps towards the origin of life. Beginning with its discovery in 1655, the authors describe our current knowledge of Titan, including observations made before the space age, results from the Voyager missions of the 1980s, and recent revelations from the world's most advanced telescopes. In Lifting Titan's Veil, Ralph Lorenz includes his personal experiences in preparing for the Cassini mission, which will reach Saturn in 2004 and release the Huygens probe into Titan's atmosphere in 2005. A splendid introduction to Titan, this book will appeal to anyone interested in astronomical discovery and space exploration. Ralph Lorenz trained as an engineer and worked for the European Space Agency at the very beginning of the Huygens project. Since obtaining a PhD at the University of Kent, England, he has worked as a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, Tucson. His research interests focus on Titan, but also include climatology, radar, impact dynamics and spacecraft and instrumentation design. He has been involved in NASA's largest planetary mission (Cassini) and its smallest (the DS-2 Mars Microprobes). Jacqueline Mitton obtained a Ph.D in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge, and is now a full-time writer and media consultant specializing in astronomy. She has served as Press Officer for the Royal Astonomical Society since 1989, and was Editor of the Journal of the British Astronomical Association 1989-1993. She has written or co-authored sixteen published astronomy books, the most recent, The Cambridge Dictionary of Astronomy (2001). |
Inhalt
| 1 | |
| 33 | |
| 67 | |
Murky meteorology | 103 |
Titans landscape | 143 |
The CassiniHuygens mission | 171 |
The shape of things to come | 221 |
Titan summary of dynamical and physical data | 249 |
Bibliography and Internet resources | 251 |
Index | 255 |
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
altitude ammonia astronomers atmos bright Callisto camera carbon Carl Sagan Cassini Cassini-Huygens mission Chapter clouds colour as Plate condense Coustenis crater dark density detected Discovering Titan disk drops Earth effect Enceladus experiments Figure freeze Galilean moons Galileo gases gravity greenhouse haze haze particles heat hemisphere Hubble Space Telescope Huygens probe hydrogen Hyperion Iapetus images of Titan impact impact craters infrared instruments Jupiter Jupiter's lakes latitudes launch layer light liquid look Mars measure methane molecules moons Murky meteorology NASA nitrogen observations Observatory occultation ocean perhaps Ph.D phere photochemistry planet planetary polarisation radar radiation radio Ralph Lorenz RALPH'S LOG rock rotation Sagan satellites Saturn saturnian scientists sensor signal solar system spacecraft sunlight temperature tholins tidal tion Titan's atmosphere Titan's landscape Titan's puzzling atmosphere Titan's surface tour ultraviolet vapour pressure Venus Voyager wavelengths waves winds
Beliebte Passagen
Seite 103 - ... have their Water and Clouds, there is no reason why the other Planets should be without them. I can't say that they are exactly of the same nature with our Water; but that they should be liquid their use requires, as their beauty does that they should be clear. For this Water of ours, in Jupiter and Saturn, would be frozen up instantly by reason of the vast distance of the Sun. Every Planet therefore must have its Waters of such a temper, as to be proportion'd to its heat: Jupiter's and Saturn's...
Seite 103 - tis certain that the Earth and Jupiter have their Water and Clouds, there is no reason why the other Planets should be without them. I can't say that they are exactly of the same nature with our Water; but that they should be liquid their use requires, as their beauty does that they should be clear. For this Water of ours, in Jupiter and Saturn, would be frozen up instantly by reason of the vast distance of the Sun. Every Planet therefore must...
Seite 21 - Cassini in 1671, who immediately reported a great brightness variation, suggesting . . . "but it seems, that one part of his surface is not so capable of reflecting to us the light of the Sun which maketh it visible, as the other part is
Seite 170 - I shall be very well contented, and shall count I have done a great matter, if I can but come to any knowledge of the nature of things, as they now are, never troubling my head about their beginning, or how they were made, knowing that to be out of the reach of human Knowledge, or even Conjecture.
Seite 170 - Production of the World, is founded upon such poor and trifling grounds, that I have often wonder'd how an ingenious man could spend all that pains in making such fancies hang together.
Seite 112 - The rain starts by nucleating around particles in the upper atmosphere. That stuff is usually suspended higher up. and won't reach the surface. But it can be transported down by the weight of the rain, down to lower altitudes. When the rain stops, the last drops evaporate. leaving their cores exposed. The rain ghost. The term 'rain ghost...
Seite 26 - Jitterbug drifted over a pair of giant craters, each perhaps over fifty miles across. In one of these the central peak seemed to have broadened into a dome, so that the ethane pool was contained in a thin ring around a central island. But she could see a pit at the...
Seite 11 - He wrote: ... with a clear image and using a magnification of 750,1 observed Titan with very darkened edges (somewhat similar to those one observes on the disk of Neptune), while on the central part, much brighter, one sees two round, whiter patches, which give the appearance of a blurred Figure 1.6.
Seite 59 - Clays (p. 88) are plastic. polarized light in ordinary light, vibrations take place in all possible directions at right angles to the path of the light beam.
Seite 111 - It was more like being caught in a snowstorm. with the flakes replaced by these big globules of methane liquid. The drops weren't spheres, they were visibly deformed intoflat hockey-puck shapes, flattened out.