Opinion The splendors of Saturn By Tony Laszlo	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
土星の壮麗な美しさ カッシーニが土星の北極上空から撮る写真 — 。美しい環(リング)を真上から撮るその一枚を 私は心を躍らせながら待ちわびている。

Watching the live television broadcasts of the manned expeditions to the Moon during the '60s and '70s was certainly very exciting. Every bit of dust and rock was mysterious and alien. But the dreary, gray landscape was a bit of a let-down after a while, especially for those of us who had been told as children that the Moon was made of cheese, or was home to a giant rabbit pounding mochi.

Growing up, I was always fascinated by Saturn. Multi-colored Jupiter with its great Red Spot and four large moons was also majestic, to be sure. And it was fun to wonder if there might indeed be intelligent life on Mars, even though that planet seemed more menacing than inviting. But those rings around Saturn made the planet both stunning and enigmatic. What were they made of? How many were there? Were they as smooth as they appeared? Why didn't the other planets have them? (We now know that some of the other planets do have rings, but they are not nearly as prominent).

Saturn's distance from us - between a billion and a billion-and-a-half kilometers - made it all the more tantalizing. Whereas we can go to the Moon in just a few days, it would take a spaceship years to get to Saturn and its rings. Seven years, in fact.

Cassini, a ship developed cooperatively by European and U.S. space agencies and launched back in 1997, has finally reached the Saturnian system this year. It has been an arduous journey. To pick up additional speed, Cassini first made "gravity assist flybys" of some other bodies in space. Simply put, this means it flung itself around Venus twice, once around the Earth, and once again around Jupiter. The resulting kick from these maneuvers provided the craft with around 20 times the propulsion of its main engines. Then, in early November, the spacecraft passed as close as 1,200 kilometers from the surface of Titan, one of Saturn's moons.

This is a pretty exciting business. Titan is one of the largest bodies in our solar system, largely unstudied, and quite similar to Earth during its formative years. Cassini's probing of that moon may very well give us important hints about our own origins.

Still, I couldn't help feeling even more enthralled with a certain event that occurred a few months earlier in the year. On July 1, as part of a maneuver to enter into orbit around Saturn, Cassini actually flew through the planet's magnificent rings. Not near, over or around, but right through. How the kid in me would have liked to have been on board the Cassini to witness that moment!

We will be hearing a whole lot more about Titan soon. Near the end of December, Cassini will release Huygens, a special probe that will descend to the moon's surface in mid-January. It will then make at least 70 or 80 more orbits of Saturn.

I'm especially looking forward to a photograph Cassini will take in a few years, when it flies over Saturn's north pole. That's when we'll see those rings from almost directly above. In all their splendor.

Shukan ST: Nov. 19, 2004

(C) All rights reserved