A free public event featuring the latest images and science results from instruments aboard the Cassini spacecraft now at Saturn will be held at the University of Colorado at Boulder at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 1.
The event will be hosted by CU-Boulder Professor Larry Esposito of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and Carolyn Porco of Boulder's Space Science Institute. Esposito is team leader for the CU-Boulder-built, $12.5 million Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph, or UVIS, on board the spacecraft. Porco leads the Cassini Imaging Team that operates two cameras on the spacecraft.
The event will be held in room 100 of the Mathematics Building, located at the intersection of Folsom Street and Colorado Avenue. The doors will open at 6:30 p.m.
The presentation will include color images of Saturn's rings and aurora, images of Titan's clouds, and illustrations and maps of density waves and wakes in Saturn's fabulous ring system. The space scientists also will show images of the "patchy" atmosphere of the tiny moon, Enceladus, maps of oxygen in the Saturn system and present some of the latest theories explaining the new findings.
Parking will be available in lot 436 at the southeast corner of Regent Drive and Colorado Avenue.
The NASA-ESA Cassini spacecraft entered Saturn orbit in June 2004. As the most ambitious planetary mission ever, the spacecraft traveled more than 2 billion miles during a roundabout, 6.7-year journey to the ringed planet. The $3 billion international project is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
For more information contact Kate Becker at (303) 735-0962 or kate.becker@lasp.colorado.edu.