Product Description

Cassini At Saturn – Huygens Results brings the story of the Cassini-Huygens mission and their joint exploration of the Saturnian system right up to date. Cassini entered orbit around Saturn June 2004 so this update includes 8 months of scientific data available for review, including the most spectacular images of Saturn, its rings and satellites ever obtained by a space mission. As the Cassini spacecraft approached its destination in spring 2004, the quality of the images already being returned by the spacecraft clearly demonstrated the spectacular nature of the close-range views that will be obtained. The book contains a 16-page colour section, comprising a carefully chosen selection of the most stunning images to be released during the spacecraft’s initial period of operation. The Huygens craft, released by Cassini, parachuted through the clouds of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in January 2005. David Harland tells the exciting story of the this craft’s journey to the surface of one of the most enigmatic bodies on the Solar System, the only moon to have a dense atmosphere and possibly lakes of liquid gas at -190ºC on its surface. Titan is considered to be an early Earth in deep freeze, possibly with the building blocks of life in its atmosphere. There will undoubtedly be enormous interest in the first results and images of Titan’s surface, and this book is the first incisive summary of this groundbreaking material.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #816188 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
From the reviews:

"Noted space historian Harland has updated his book, Mission to Saturn a ] writing a fascinating, detailed, and well-developed history of Saturn a ] . Written for the intelligent layperson, there is a wealth of detail about the mission, presented in text and extensive sets of figures and photographs, including 16 in spectacular color. There is a 15-page index, four pages of suggested reading, eight pages of facts and figures, two pages of acronyms and 28 pages of notes. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels of readers." (W. E. Howard, Choice, Vol. 45 (1), 2007)

"Cassini at Saturn is essentially a revised version of Harlanda (TM)s earlier book of the same name written before Cassini actually got to Saturn a ] . As a reference book it is highly detailed a ] . The book has plenty of black and white illustrations a ] . As a reference, this book is very useful." (Keith Cooper, Astronomy Now, December, 2007)

"This work is essentially a new, enlarged edition of Harlanda (TM)s earlier book on Cassini, Mission to Saturn a ] . this present volume includes a selection of colour images, including spectacular views of Titan from the Huygens probe. This book is an excellent primer on Saturn and the history of humanitya (TM)s fascination with this spectacular world. Ita (TM)s also a very thorough account of the Cassini mission to date a" and the mission is far from over." (David Maclennan, Liftoff, Issue 242, 2007)

"Data from Cassini-Huygens will be analysed and interpreted for years to come a" the wait for the definitive results will be a long one, so David Harland has decided to jump right in a" and it was a good decision! His book is meticulouslyresearched a ] . an excellent and thorough treatment which I am sure Ia (TM)ll use as a reference for a long time to come. Ita (TM)s a a ~musta (TM) for planetary and space scientists and is even quite reasonably priced!" (John Zarnecki, The Observatory, Vol. 128 (1203), 2008)

About the Author
Saturn, the ‘ringed planet’, was first inspected close-up by NASA’s Pioneer 11 space probe in 1979. The two Voyager spacecraft followed up in 1980 and in 1981, but as ‘fly-bys’ these craft had only a limited time to study the planet, its rings and its many moons. Now, after a seven-year interplanetary voyage, the Cassini-Huygens mission, which is a joint venture by NASA and Europe, is due to enter orbit around Saturn in July 2004 to make an in depth survey. In December it will release the Huygens probe, which will dive into the clouds of Saturn’s largest and most enigmatic moon, Titan, and land on its surface, a month later. The author’s highly successful first book on this topic, ‘MISSION TO SATURN – Cassini and the Huygens probe’ presented a review of our state of knowledge and looked forward to the arrival of the new spacecraft.

Customer Reviews

Not for the average reader
It may be true that this book contains a lot of information about Saturn and its moons and all the other findings in the outer solar system, however, the writing style is quite complicated for someone that isn't thoroughly experienced in the field of astronomy.

The writing style is extremely technical and overly detailed. For example, there are several sections in the book where the author describes each specific part on the space probe that NASA has built using highly technical terms that only a veteran astronomer or NASA scientist would be familiar with. The average reader will get lost quite fast in all the technical explanations and get quite frustrated. Here is a typical example of the style of writing that the author uses:

"The Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS) did not have a lens, it had a series of linear apertures set in line which served as a collimator to produce a field of view 2 by 15 milliradians, then a diffraction grating illuminated a linear array of 128 detectors, each of which measured the brightness on a 1024 point scale to measure the range of 50-170 nanometers in a spectral resolution of 1 nanometre. It was to investigate ultraviolet glows in interplanetary space and in ionospheres, and use limb sounding measurements of the extent to which insolation was absorbed during solar occultations to profile the chemical composition of the upper regions of planetary atmospheres...."

If you can figure out such details then this book is for you. He uses this kind of writing throughout the majority of the book and it gets quite frustrating to try to decipher all the technical jargon.

Furthermore, the author fails to focus on perhaps the most important part of the subject matter, the planets and the moons themselves. He spends so much time going into every little detail of how NASA actually sends its probes to their locations that you get lost trying to figure out what he was trying to explain to begin with. He constantly uses terms only familiar to physics and chemistry majors.

If you are looking for a more amateur-friendly book about astronomy then I recommend checking out David Grinspoon. His writing is a lot less technical and he focuses on the important big picture instead of letting his readers get lost in all the insignificant details that are only important to a scientist, not an amateur astronomy enthusiast.

Excellent Update
This is a new edition of Harland's fine 'Mission to Saturn', adding
100 new pages of Cassini findings through summer 2006, including of
course the results of the Huygens encounter at Titan. As usual, a
handy, comprehensive volume, nicely written and illustrated. (There is no point in buying Mission to Saturn now, since its contents
are included in CaS:HR)