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Beyond Earth, Before Me

by

Lauren Roberts

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I should have known.

I should have known there was no chance I could hold to the mantra I was singing to myself as I pulled into the parking lot for Loreto Plaza, the open air shopping center that houses both my credit union’s ATM and Santa Barbara’s popular independent bookstore, Chaucer’s. I did need a bit of cash. I didn’t need more books. So as I turned into the lot, I began chanting, “I will not check the bookstore. I will not check the bookstore. I will not check the bookstore.”

I checked the bookstore.

And there I found Saturn: A New View (Abrams; $40), a newly released and absolutely stunning coffee table-style book that houses 150 images of that fabulous planet, many of them published for the first time. The exquisitely detailed images come from Casssini-Huygens, which arrived at Saturn in 2004 after a seven-year journey. Its mission was the close-up observation of the  planet, its rings and its moons.

A considerable portion of the credit for this superb book must go to the team who selected and brilliantly reproduced the images, and laid them out in such a magnificent arrangement, accompanying them with well-written essays on the planetary system and the mission. Galileo would be euphoric.

He made, after all, the first recorded observation of Saturn in 1610. But with only a twenty power telescope his views were, well, primitive. Nevertheless, what he found puzzled him. Saturn appeared to have handles or ears that, to his surprise, disappeared two years later. What we know as the Saturn ring-plane crossing (when Saturn moves into a position where the rings are seen edge-on from earth) caused him to write: “I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlooked for and so novel.” Still, Galileo did discover several of Jupiter’s moons—a discovery that earned him the wrath of Catholic Church officials.

It wasn’t until 1659 that the Dutch mathematician, Christiaan Huygens, characterized Galileo’s handles as a disk. More moons were also found in the 17th century including Titan, Iapetus, Rhea, Tethys and Dione as well as the discovery by Jean-Dominique Cassini of the gap in Saturn’s ring (that bears his name).

Building on this work, astronomer and telescope builder, William Herschel, in 1789, found even more satellites. He also suggested that Saturn had more than one ring. And approximately 100 years after that, James Keeler was able to confirm an earlier theory that Saturn’s rings were not sold, but made up of particles flying in formation but not at the same rate.

Photography had been discovered in 1839, but its use for astronomical purposes didn’t really come into serious use until the early twentieth century. (It was in fact what made the discovery of Pluto possible.) But even photography only aided the observational and theoretical aspects of this science. It wasn’t until the 1960s that experimentation—the basis for facts—could first be obtained through visits.

The necessary space technology for such visits evolved out of the Germany’s work during World War II on their V-1 and V-2 rockets. Though the war ended in 1945, the race for the conquest of space between the Soviet Union and the United States took off. There were successes and failures on both sides, which offered valuable information to scientists and engineers about getting spacecraft up, out and about. Learn they did, and in 1973 Pioneer 11—the first mission to Saturn—was launched. It took nearly five years for it to get there, but when the satellite reached Saturn it began returning astonishing pictures of the unlit part of Saturn’s rings and its largest moon, Titan. (Also surveying Saturn about this same time were Voyager 1 and 2, but they were headed outward and only surveyed the planets, including Saturn, as they passed by.)

Even as Pioneer and the Voyagers were sending images back, plans for the Cassini-Huygens mission were moving forward. It took nearly 20 years from the original concept to the launch of the spacecraft in late 1997, but Cassini eventually arrived at Saturn on July 1, 2004. It was a long journey, but the time was used well. The Cassini team worked to develop and tweak orbits for the spacecraft’s complicated tour of duty as well as creating an alternative plan for dropping the Huygens probe onto Titan when the first one proved unworkable after the launch.

“It has taken,” writes the book’s team, “about a century to go from sketching Saturn under a wooden dome to putting a robot on the surface of Titan.” But the wait was worth it. Saturn is now known to have more than 40 moons of which 35 have been officially named. Cassini’s remarkable photographs show that Saturn’s winter season produces a cloud-free atmosphere (with an earthly blue sky color) in the northern region of the planet. The images also show that some of Saturn’s rings are transparent, allowing others to be seen through them. And we’ve learned that the rings spread over 300,000 miles, but are only about 20-30 feet thick.

The book is divided into chapters—Saturn Sublime, Saturn’s Close-Up, A Ringed World, Saturn’s Moons, Looking Outward and The Art in Science—that include an essay and its related images. The essays are friendly, sharing their information in a informal yet intelligent manner. You need no special knowledge to appreciate and understand them, but any you do have is not insulted by rudimentary assumptions.

The hardest part of reviewing a book like this—with images as the star—is that it is difficult to convey their power in words. Adjectives that I could use abound, but those are limited in the ability to show what really must be seen to be appreciated. Nevertheless, a closer look at one of the chapters may provide a sense of why I deem this book worthy of any reader’s time and effort.

“Saturn’s Moons” opens with a black & white image of Iapetus, a close-up so startling you want to jump back to avoid bumping against it. On the opposite page is a small colorized image of Titan’s upper atmosphere which opens the essay. The chapter is divided in two sections: Regular Moons and Irregular Moons. The former include Saturn’s eight largest moons (including Titan) and its small, close-in “ringmoons.” The readers learns that these follow nearly circular orbits in the same direction in the same plane. Saturn’s irregular moons, on the other hand, orbit much farther out and their orbits tend to be random. The essay, extending over seven pages with images, explores several of the moons and provides solid if brief explanations and then spends most of its time on Titan. But it is the photographs that make up the rest of the chapter—40 full pages worth of color and B&W of Huygens descent, of Mimas against the rings, of Epimethus and the F ring, of bizarre and creepy Hyperion, of the tiny ringmoons, of icy Enceladus, of Tethys’ enormous rift zone and more—that are the heartbeat of this gorgeous and exciting book.  

Anyone who has any level of interest in space will fall in love with Saturn: A New View. (It could also spark an initial interest in astronomy for tweens and teens, especially for a girl who may never have considered such a career.) And since the holidays are not that far off, I urge you to consider it for your gift list. It is truly beauty beyond earth, and it has my highest recommendation.

To view the latest images from Cassini—they’re fascinating, but don’t expect the high quality of the images in this book—visit the Cassini-Huygens Web site.


Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines have reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, 750 bookmarks and nearly 1,000 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

 
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