Lifting Titan's Veil: Exploring the Giant Moon of Saturn

ISBN-13: 9780521793483 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 268 str.

Ralph Lorenz; Jacqueline Mitton; Jacqueline Mitton

Opis

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).

Recenzje

'It is a relativity well-kept secret among planetary scientists that Saturn's moon Titan is not merely the second largest satellite, but one of the most complex and interesting bodies in our solar system. … Lorenz and Milton have done us all a service by writing a book that stimulates the public's interest and refreshes scientists' memories before Cassini and Huygens deliver their floods of data and revolutionize our understanding of Titan forever.' Randolph L. Kirk, EOS

Spis treści

Preface; 1. Discovering Titan; 2. Seeing Titan; 3. Titan's puzzling atmosphere; 4. Murky meteorology; 5. Titan's landscape; 6. The Cassini-Huygens mission; 7. The shape of things to come; Appendix. Titan - physical and dynamical data; Bibliography.