Running Rings Around Saturn
Joshua Colwell, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
UCF Physics Department
The Cassini spacecraft, carrying the ESA-built Huygens probe, entered Saturn orbit on June 30, 2004, and the Huygens probe successfully landed on the surface of Saturn’s large moon Titan on January 14, 2005.
After more than 12 years orbiting Saturn, Cassini has completed more than 235 orbits of the ringed planet and more than 120 encounters with Titan. Cassini has also explored many of Saturn’s dozens of icy moons, and its observations have revealed rapidly changing structures in the rings and other features such as the high reflectivity suggest the rings may be astronomically young.
I’ll describe the fascinating phenomena in Saturn’s rings revealed by Cassini that contain clues to the origin of planets which are born in disks of particles not unlike the rings. I’ll also present results from our experimental program to study collisions in the protoplanetary disk and in Saturn’s rings.
RSVP is requested.
For more information and to RSVP, visit http://sciences.ucf.edu/cafe/joshua-colwell-ph-d/
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