[AANC Contacts] Reminder: Saturn's Restless Rings Nov. 12 Astronomy Lecture

[Andrew Fraknoi]

Public Lecture Open to Everyone
with some Spectacular New Images
and Animations
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On Wednesday, November 12, at 7 pm,
Astronomer Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute
will give a non-technical, illustrated talk on:
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Saturn's Restless Rings:
Latest Results from the Cassini Mission
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as part of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures
in the Smithwick Theater, Foothill College,
El Monte Road and Freeway 280,
in Los Altos Hills, California.

Free and open to the public.
Parking on campus costs $2.

Call the series hot-line at 650-949-7888 for
more information and driving directions.

No background in science will be required for
this talk.  Seating is first come, first served.
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has just entered its fifth year
exploring the planet Saturn. Its cameras and other
instruments continue to send back to Earth a treasure trove
of new information about the planet, its rings, and its
large family of fascinating moons.  Dr. Showalter will share
some of the marvelous pictures from Saturn and take a
close-up look at the "lord of the rings".

Whereas we once believed Saturn's rings to be stable for
millions of years, we are learning that some of the rings
can change in appearance over time scales as brief as
decades, or sometimes even days. The rings have revealed a
variety of surprising phenomena, including "jets", "propellers",
"wisps", "spokes", and "braids". We are interested in Saturn's
rings not only for their own sake, but also because in them
we observe some of the same processes that formed our
Solar System out of a cloud of dust and debris long ago.

Dr. Mark Showalter is a Principal Investigator at the SETI Institute
in Mountain View, whose research focuses primarily on ring-moon
systems. He has been a member of the Cassini science team
for nearly a decade, and had a lead role in planning some of Cassini's
observations. Dr. Showalter is the discoverer of Jupiter's
outermost ring, Saturn's moon Pan, and two moons and
two faint rings of Uranus.

The lecture is co-sponsored by:
* NASA Ames Research Center
* The Foothill College Astronomy Program
* The SETI Institute
* The Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

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Past Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures are now available
in MP3 format at:
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/podcast/index.html