Download Saturn - Kansas City Public Schools

1. Overview/introduction.
(No narration until Saturn rises...)
Music fades in, with lots of
lows and anticipatory in style
(growing). Iapetus approaches
the front horizon. The music
comes to a big crescendo when
Saturn rises, RINGS FIRST, up
from behind the moon limb.
It is one of the most beautiful and majestic
planets in the solar system. With its pale
amber disk and bright glittering rings, it’s
also one of the most recognizable planets in
the heavens … Saturn, a symbol of all that is
exotic and wonderful about the universe.
Once, this magnificent world was the most
distant planet we knew of, a mystery seemingly
beyond our grasp. But now, we have finally
reached out to this ringed giant. We have
circled among its icy moons … explored its
storm clouds and the swarming particles of its
rings … unmasked its secrets and brought it at
last to within our understanding.
It is a part of the long human journey of
exploration … a journey where each new
destination leads us to a new appreciation of
the glorious universe that beckons beyond the
shores of Earth...
Title Sequence
Introduce Cassini
In 2004, after a seven-year round-about
journey through the solar system, Cassini was
the first spacecraft to fall into orbit about
Saturn, becoming a new moon of the ringed
planet.
The size of a school bus, Cassini is one of
the largest and most sophisticated unmanned
spacecraft ever sent skyward. Its suite of
eighteen separate instrument packages studied
Unlit side view of Saturn
appears (looks dark).
At crescendo: Have the sun
disappear behind Saturn and
emulate the famous Cassini
“eclipse shot”.
Title draws out in front of
Saturn.
Cassini spacecraft at Saturn,
slowly rotating.
Zoom into one of the spacecraft
instruments – coming out of the
high gain antenna.
Saturn, its rings, its moons, and its magnetic
environment.
We recede away from Cassini,
Saturn and Titan.
The distance separating Earth and Saturn is so
great that Cassini’s radio signals take almost
an hour and a half to traverse the nearly one
billion miles of empty space between them.
We move in toward the Earth,
then comes the North American
continent…
Then California…
Scientists and engineers are still studying
these data and sharing their findings with the
world.
and into the JPL control room
where scientists are monitoring
the images.
Their work, and that of Cassini, is the
continuation of a curiosity about the ringed
planet that goes back centuries...
2. Historical overview.
For thousands of years before the telescope,
when the sky was a mirror for the gods, Saturn
was well-known as one of the seven ancient
“wanderers” among the stars. The Sun, Moon,
and five visible lights that the Greeks would
eventually call “planets” could be tracked
along the backdrop of constellations.
To the ancient Babylonians, the slowest of
these wanderers was Ninib, named for a god of
war. Later, the Greeks and Romans beat his
sword into a plowshare and called him Saturn
after an agricultural deity. But no one would
guess the true nature of these wandering
lights for many centuries more…
It was not until the early seventeenth
century, when the Italian scientist Galileo
Galilei turned the newly invented spyglass to
the heavens, that humanity began to see the
planets as other worlds.
Through his crude telescope, Saturn appeared
as a “triple world,” a larger body with two
Transition thru screen to
ancient Mesopotamia scene –
desert with oasis, distant
ziggurat. Planets in slow
motion through the starry sky.
Add trails to the planets and
moon.
Small Babylonian god figures
superimpose on the moving
planet dots, Ninib in a
different color.
Crossfade to Saturn figure.
Through the tunnel to emerge in
Renaissance Italy.
Portrait of Galileo
Galileo’s drawings sketch out
smaller companions that he called “attendants”
on either side.
on an easel board…
Two years later, Galileo found that the
attendants were missing, and wondered if
Saturn had “devoured his own children.” But
when he looked again a few years later, they
had somehow returned.
Saturn’s peculiar appearance and behavior
puzzled astronomers for decades. It wasn’t
until 1655 that the astronomer Christiaan
Huygens, with a much better telescope,
determined the true nature of the planet’s
unusual companions. Huygens correctly
described them as a thin flat ring, nowhere
actually touching the body of the planet.
It was the inclined nature of the ring that
had confounded Galileo. Saturn, like Earth,
is tilted on its axis, and as the planet
orbits the sun, the apparent tilt of the ring
changes when viewed from Earth. When Galileo
noted Saturn’s missing companions in 1612, it
was simply because the ring was then edge-on
to Earth, making it nearly invisible.
Dutch scene – inside a room.
Move around the room and
display model and diagrams.
Saturn with nondescript ring.
For decades afterward, astronomers debated the
physical nature of the ring; was it solid,
liquid, or gaseous? It was not until the late
1800’s that scientists, using far better
telescopes, were able to determine that the
ring was made of swarms of individual
particles orbiting the planet. They also
noticed that these particles were far enough
apart from each other that stars were able to
shine through.
Ring drawings.
Since the invention of the telescope four
hundred years ago Saturn has remained
fascinating target for amateur and
professional astronomers alike.
Cross through picture in the
wall to reveal Keck mirror.
Zoom toward mirror where images
show up on it.
Today, a small modern day telescope with a
Better modern views with
Telescope view of Saturn (small
but showing the rings).
magnifying power of only 30 times will show
the rings better than any view Galileo ever
had.
A medium-sized telescope with modest power
begins to reveal the subtle cloud bands in the
planet’s chilly atmosphere. It also shows the
dark division in the ring that was first
recorded by another Italian, Giovanni Cassini,
in 1675. This rift was found to be a gap in
the ring, and is known as the Cassini
Division. It separates Saturn’s broad ring
into two parts: the outer “A ring” and the
inner “B ring.”
A careful observer today can also notice a
faint star-like object that never strays far
from the planet. This is Titan, discovered by
Christiaan Huygens in 1655. Titan is the
largest and first of Saturn’s moons to be
discovered. Giovanni Cassini found four more,
and many others have been discovered since …
icy worlds circling a cold and dazzling parent
nine hundred million miles from the Sun.
details.
Note the ring sections.
Cassini portrait.
Cassini drawing.
Telescope view showing Titan
speck around Saturn.
Zoom up to Titan.
Scene fuzzes out...
For all that we can see through our modern-day
telescopes, Saturn’s great distance and the
optical distortions created by our turbulent
atmosphere restrict our Earth-bound view. But
with the arrival of the Space Age, all that
changed…
3. The Space Age
In the 1970’s and 80’s, spacecraft from Earth
made their first brief fly-bys of the great
ringed planet and expanded our knowledge of
this world far beyond the limited details
observable from Earth.
Pioneer 11, and especially the two Voyagers,
in their fleeting encounters with Saturn,
revealed a planetary system far more complex
and dynamic than we had first expected.
And while these brief glimpses left us with an
Pioneer 11 flyby animation.
Images fly out of Pioneer’s
radar dish, then repeat the
process for Voyager.
unforgettable impression of the phenomena
waiting to be discovered, they also gave us a
sense of scientific riches just beyond our
grasp.
Images keep flying out.
Scientists soon realized that Saturn and its
companions offered what no other planetary
system had before: A chance to witness the
same evolutionary processes at work today as
those responsible for shaping the early solar
system.
It was clear: We needed to return to the great
ringed planet ... this time, to stay.
Our answer to this challenge was the CassiniHuygens spacecraft, named for the astronomers
who used the best technology of their day in
an effort to understand the planet that had
perplexed Galileo.
Launched in 1997, Cassini-Huygens was the
largest, heaviest and most complex
interplanetary vehicle ever built, carrying
instruments for 27 separate investigations –
and more than three tons of fuel.
For seven years it used the planets Venus,
Earth and Jupiter in a game of gravitational
slingshot to achieve the right speed and
trajectory to reach its target…
Rocketcam-like view of launch
vehicle climbing through the
atmosphere.
Cassini emerges from its shroud
in earth orbit.
Quick crossfades of Cassini
flying by Venus, Earth &
Jupiter. Speed up original
shots… make them more dramatic.
Then, in 2004, after a journey of more than
two billion miles, Cassini arrived at its
destination. It fired its engine in a long
gradual burn, slowing itself enough that it
could be captured by Saturn’s gravity.
Cassini orbit insertion burn.
Cassini has now flown by Titan more than forty
times, not only to study the moon close up,
Orbital “petals” of Cassini
around Saturn.
Cassini flies up through a gap
in the rings.
but for gravity assists into different orbits.
This kind of navigation allowed Cassini to
visit almost any part of the Saturnian system
with a minimal expenditure of fuel.
Each orbit was carefully designed so we could
study Saturn, its rings, and its magnetic
field from a variety of locations … as well as
make close passes of Saturn’s other major
satellites.
So what secrets has Cassini revealed?
4. Saturn today.
Saturn is a giant, spinning ball of gas – an
envelope of compressed hydrogen surrounding an
Earth-sized rocky core and blanketed with a
thick, cloudy atmosphere. Second only to
massive Jupiter in size, it dwarfs our own
Earth, which would seem but a cosmic pebble
beside this huge world.
Slowly approach the upper
atmosphere of Saturn,
eventually revealing the
swirling clouds.
Saturn’s atmosphere is a multi-colored soup of
cloud bands, Earth-sized hurricanes, and jet
streams with winds exceeding a thousand miles
per hour. The atmosphere is mostly hydrogen
and helium, muted by a frigid haze where the
cloudtop temperature lingers at two hundred
degrees below zero.
Upper atmosphere reveals more
detail – swirling clouds and
oval storm. Lot of rumbling
and swooshing sound effects.
Active regions at its north and south poles
reveal strange hurricane-like whirlwinds over
50 miles deep with winds circling at 350 miles
per hour. The circular and oblong clouds
dotting this image are likely the result of
upwelling air from deep inside the planet.
This air helps power the cyclones. The clear
air of the vortex eye is an area of downdraft
large enough to swallow four Earths.
Polar view showing south pole
vortex - Actual 3d model with
the images used as templates
Despite its great size, Saturn spins on its
axis more than twice as fast as Earth,
completing one rotation in just ten and a half
hours. Rotating with it is an enormous
Large Saturn in rotation.
Camera view slowly tilts down
to a side view.
Add magnetic field lines that
magnetic field generated deep within the
planet, creating a monstrous region of
magnetic influence called a magnetosphere. Its
shape and character changes with the buffeting
of the solar wind.
extend way out from the planet.
Saturn’s fabled rings provided some of the
biggest surprises. Prior to the Voyager
encounters, we knew of only three broad rings,
spanning a total distance of more than two
hundred thousand miles.
Saturn’s Rings Animation
(gradually changing viewpoint)
Solar wind streams around the
magnetic field.
The Voyagers and Cassini discovered that the
main rings were themselves made up of
thousands of discrete “ringlets,” each
consisting of icy rubble and debris. This
rubble is thought to be kept in place by the
numerous gravitational tugs of Saturn’s
outlying moons.
In fact, a thin braided ringlet lying just
beyond the edge of the main rings and now
called the “F Ring” is shepherded by a pair of
small moonlets on either side. Their
gravitational nudges are sufficient to keep
the ring particles narrowly grouped together.
There seem to be other forces at work on the
rings as well. The Voyager flybys revealed
dark, spoke-like structures that appear to be
traveling through the brighter ring material.
Could they be caused by Saturn’s rotating
magnetic field interacting with tiny dust
grains in the rings? The fact is we still
don’t know with any certainty the source of
this strange phenomenon.
And yet, despite the rings’ vast span and
complex structure, the thickness of the rings
is no greater than the distance between the
goal posts on a football field. They are so
thin that they all but disappear when seen
edge-on from Earth.
Tilt down to bring F ring and
shepherd moons into view
Crossfade to reveal the
rotation of the rings with
spoke-like features.
Crossfade to large view of
Saturn, oblique view of the
rings, moving slowly…
Another view shows the rings
tilting through the edge-on
position.
From a distance the rings may appear solid.
Dip into the ring plane to show
the chunks
In reality, they are an enormous blizzard of
countless chunks of ice and ice-covered rock
that range in size from snowflakes to
icebergs.
Each races around Saturn at speeds of up to
50,000 miles per hour.
Such a setting of great beauty, enormity and
complexity naturally begs the question: How
did these rings form in the first place?
Observations from Cassini indicate that the
rings may have been created when a moon was
shattered by an impact into countless
fragments. These eventually spun out into a
disk.
The pieces continue to re-assemble themselves,
forming small moonlets which are then
shattered to form new ring material, a
recycling process that makes the rings
constantly appear new.
5. Saturn’s moons.
Two moons approach each other
and shatter in a thunderous
explosion...
Time lapse-like crossfades of
the material spreading out to
form the rings.
The rings exist today as swarms of orbiting
particles like so many trillions of tiny
moons. Yet Saturn has an impressive family of
large satellites – one of the most diverse and
intriguing collections in the solar system.
Saturn’s unique family ranges from tiny
moonlets no bigger than a town, to Titan, the
second largest moon in the solar system,
bigger even than the planet Mercury.
Saturn and rings.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system to
have a significant atmosphere – and the only
place other than Earth where the air is mostly
made of nitrogen. Titan’s atmosphere is
polluted with a smoggy orange haze of organic
Titan Exterior Shot
Orbital paths reappear
molecules, so much so that its cold and
mysterious surface was completely hidden from
the Voyagers’ view.
Huygens Landing – new video
In early 2005, six months after entering orbit
around Saturn, the Huygens probe detached
itself from Cassini and parachuted to the
surface of Titan. At last, the surface of this
primitive world was open for direct study.
Landing in what’s been described as “Titanian
ice gravel,” Huygens photographed chunks of
water ice up to six inches across and found
evidence of erosion at the bases of these
chunks, possibly caused by a flowing liquid.
Titan’s atmosphere is a mixture of chemicals
that scientists think are similar to the
atmosphere that existed on the early Earth –
here preserved at a temperature of nearly
three hundred degrees below zero. Titan’s
methane rains, ethane lakes and organic
sludges are a snapshot of what Earth was like
long before life arose, and offer clues to how
our world became a life-bearing planet.
Camera moves around the Huygens
lander and the surface chunks.
Titan is not alone in harboring wonders and
mysteries among the fantastic moons of Saturn.
While many of these satellites are more ice
than rock, they also possess an array of
incredible features, including deep canyons,
towering cliffs and wispy surface colorations.
Zoom away to see the Saturnian
system – other moons are
orbiting.
Enceladus orbits Saturn in the middle of a
thin, broad sheet of particles called the “E
Ring.” Cassini’s cameras revealed what
scientists had long suspected: Icy jets
erupting on this moon supply the E ring with a
constant supply of ice particles, while at the
same time resurfacing the moon’s terrain.
Flying through the E-ring
particles to eventually reveal
Enceladus.
The greenish areas are believed to be deposits
of coarse-grained ice while the whitish ones
represent finer grained ice. The coarsegrained deposits are concentrated along valley
Grow closer to reveal the ice
plumes.
Zoom up to a photomap globe
that has high res views of the
“Tiger Stripes”.
floors and walls, as well as along the
upraised flanks of the “tiger stripe”
fractures. They are likely the fallout of
nearby geysers of ice.
In a feat of interplanetary sharp shooting,
Cassini even pinpointed precisely from which
fractures the icy jets are erupting. These
huge fissures are nearly a thousand feet deep,
with steep, V-shaped inner walls.
Flying through the canyons with
eruptions in the background.
Scientists are using images like these to
discern whether reservoirs of liquid water may
exist beneath the surface of this strange
world.
The tortured surface of Enceladus is a
masterpiece of deep time and wrenching
gravity. Its geologic activity tells a
fascinating story of a tiny world in constant
struggle, both ancient and ongoing.
The second largest moon of Saturn’s family is
Rhea. Its cratered surface, already ancient
before any complex life developed on Earth,
has probably changed very little in the past
billion years.
One of the most distinctive characteristics of
this moon is the white streaks across its
surface. These bright, wispy markings cover
its trailing hemisphere and are thought to be
luminous icy canyons created by frost venting
from cracks in its frozen crust.
Dione is also heavily cratered and streaked
with white, wispy markings.
The wisps were once thought to be thick frost
like that found on Rhea, but scientists have
now discovered that they are actually shiny
ice cliffs created by tectonic fractures in
Dione’s surface.
Enceladus animation showing ice
geysers.
Fly across the surface of Rhea.
Wispy markings up close.
Dione animation – circling its
globe.
Zoom in on wisps, cracks and
canyons.
Thanks to the close fly-bys of Cassini, we now
have splendid views of Dione’s braided canyons
and their steep white slopes.
Tethys is split by an ice canyon sixty miles
wide, several miles deep and stretching nearly
pole to pole. Known as Ithaca Chasma, the
ridges around this huge gorge have been
thoroughly hammered by multiple celestial
impacts. Bombardments such as these suggest
that Ithaca Chasma is very old indeed.
But this great rift is not the only
spectacular scar on Tethys. The Odysseus
impact basin on the opposite side of the moon
is over 250 miles wide, or nearly half of its
leading hemisphere. This basin has slightly
fewer impact craters, suggesting that it is a
younger feature on Tethys than Ithaca Chasma.
Tethys drops down from above.
Fly over Ithaca Chasma
Rotate the sphere around to
show Odysseus impact basin,
then zoom up.
Mimas bears a giant crater so large that it
covers a tenth of the surface area of this
small moon. The impact that created it was
almost powerful enough to shatter Mimas
completely. Known as Herschel Crater, its
central peak is over 4 miles higher than the
surrounding crater floor.
Mimas comes in from a distance.
The view from the surface of Mimas is
spectacular – with Saturn and its rings
filling more than half the sky.
Back away from the surface to
see Saturn in the background.
Hyperion is irregularly shaped, almost looking
more like a deformed potato than a moon … Its
rugged surface is dominated by towering cliffs
more than six miles high.
Hyperion flies in.
(3-dimensional globe as before)
Close-up views reveal a world that has been
bombarded by meteors for eons. Scientists now
think that Hyperion’s spongy appearance is due
to its unusually low density. This gives it a
weak surface gravity and a highly porous
exterior. This also limits the amount of
material that is blasted into space during
Hyperion rotates to show other
views.
Herschel crater in your face.
impact, and keeps what is expelled from
falling back to the moon’s surface.
This combination of low gravity and low
density may have helped preserve the original
shapes of Hyperion’s craters.
Phoebe is a small, scarred world. Its jagged
surface is covered with tremendous landslides
and deep impact craters. These avalanches
reveal crater walls covered with bright waterbased ice and patchy clusters of silicate and
organic material. The presence of such
volatile ices suggest that this tiny world may
have first formed in the outer solar system
far from Saturn itself. Much later, it was
captured by Saturn's gravity during a chance
encounter. Because it is a remnant of the
formation of the solar system, Phoebe is much
older than Saturn itself.
Iapetus is a two-faced moon. Its leading
hemisphere is as dark as coal, while its
trailing hemisphere is as bright as snow.
Scientists think Iapetus’ two-toned appearance
may be an example of thermal migration. The
material on the dark side is warm enough to
release small amounts of water vapor. This
vapor then drifts over to the brighter and
colder regions of Iapetus, such as the moon’s
poles or its brighter hemisphere. When cooled,
the water vapor condenses and falls to the
surface as ice. As the dark material loses its
surface ice and gets darker, the bright
regions accumulate ice and get brighter.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature discovered
on Iapetus is a mountainous ridge that
coincides almost exactly with its geographic
equator. This ridge is a conspicuous band that
extends more than halfway around the moon,
giving it a walnut-like appearance. The peak
of the ridge can reach over 12 miles above the
surrounding terrain. The geologic forces on
Night side comes into view as
we eclipse the sun, then
Hyperion drifts away.
Small Phoebe slowly approaches
from a distance.
Slowly rotate around Phoebe as
we zoom in.
Iapetus appears, Saturn coming
out from behind.
Camera movements to show the
bright and dark sections.
Water vapor over dark section.
Traverse toward brighter side
where snow and ice fall out of
the sky.
Bellyband view.
Iapetus that caused this unusual ridge still
remain a mystery.
6. What’s Next?
Does this mean we have learned all there is to
know about Saturn? Not by any means. The
Pioneer and Voyager flybys … the Huygens
lander … the Cassini orbiter – these were
merely our first attempts at trying to
comprehend this great ringed planet. There are
many more unsolved questions to answer, as
well as the likelihood of new mysteries that
have yet to be discovered…
Pioneer probe appears with
Saturn, then Voyager, then
Cassini. Huygens probe
detaches from Cassini and flies
toward Titan.
Future missions may release probes into
Saturn’s atmosphere or land on its moons.
Crossfade to a future probe
entering Titan’s atmosphere.
Parachute opens, shield drops
away.
One concept, for example, would deploy a blimp
to cruise over its surface. Such an aircraft
could carry out aerial mapping, drop telemetry
packages and then send its data back to Earth.
In the past, Saturn was only a destination of
the imagination. As we extend our presence
further into the solar system, it is possible
to imagine a time in the not too distant
future when Saturn and its moons are a
destination for us.
7. Summary. We’ll
continue to push forward
in discovery.
The past has often shown us that what once
seemed like science fiction often becomes the
reality of the future.
Crossfade to blimp flying over
Titan’s surface.
Futuristic manned spacecraft
flying at Saturn, opening out
various sections of itself.
Sun goes behind Saturn to
repeat the opening “eclipse”
shot.
What may seem like distant dreams of today
could very well become the world our greatgrandchildren live in.
These dreams represent the motivations, hope,
and outlook of our future generations.
Viewing Saturn through a telescope is an
inspiring sight; it is an invitation to
Square images move across the
sky: Telescopic and then
explore the universe.
So the next time you look at Saturn, that
bright, pale-yellow orb in the night sky, the
one our ancestors once called Ninib, remember
that it is a place of wonder, a place of
mystery… and a source of inspiration from
which future generations will create their own
dreams of discovery.
8. Credits
spacecraft views of Saturn and
its moons.
Final square zooms up to reveal
a fulldome starry sky from the
city, Saturn brightens
momentarily to emphasize its
location.