Saturn and How to Observe It (Astronomers' Observing Guides)
Cassini at Saturn: Huygens Results
The Beatles Story on Capitol Records, Parts One and Two
Saturn Planet Die-Cut Photographic Magnet
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years 1962-1970
Carolyn Porco
Quotes by Carolyn Porco
Carolyn C. Porco is an American planetary scientist and the leader of the imaging science team on the Cassini mission presently in orbit around Saturn. In late 1999, she was selected by the London Sunday Times as one of 18 scientific leaders of the 21st century, and by Industrial Week as one of "50 Stars to Watch". Porco was responsible for the epitaph and proposal to honor the late renowned planetary geologist, Eugene Shoemaker, by sending his cremains to the Moon aboard the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in 1998. Her contributions to the exploration of the outer solar system were recognized with the naming of Asteroid (7231) Porco: "Named in honor of Carolyn C. Porco, a pioneer in the study of planetary ring systems...and a leader in spacecraft exploration of the outer solar system".
Porco was an imaging scientist on the Voyager mission in the 1980s, and is also an imaging scientist on the New Horizons mission launched to Pluto on January 19, 2006. She is foremost an expert on planetary rings. As a young Voyager scientist, she was the first person to describe the behavior of the eccentric ringlets and the "spokes" discovered by Voyager within the rings of Saturn, to elucidate the mechanism by which the outer Uranian rings were being shepherded by the Voyager-discovered moons Cordelia and Ophelia, and to provide an explanation for the shepherding of the rings arcs of Neptune by the moon Galatea, also discovered by Voyager. She was a co-originator of the idea to take a 'portrait of the planets' with the Voyager spacecraft, and participated in the planning, design, and execution of those images in 1991, including the famous Pale Blue Dot image of Earth. Porco received her Ph.D. degree in 1983 from the California Institute of Technology in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. Her doctoral dissertation focused on Voyager discoveries in the rings of Saturn and was supervised by renowned dynamicist Peter Goldreich. (more)
Press Releases by CICLOPS
Cassini Returns Never-before-seen Views Of The Ringed Planet
Cassini Sends End-of-year Greetings From Across The Solar System
Nasa Sees Into The Eye Of A Monster Storm On Saturn
Saturn’s Rings Show Evidence Of A Modern-day Collision
Cassini Finds More Rings Highlighted By Telltale Small Particles
Scientists Discover New Ring And Other Features At Saturn
Carolyn Porco Videos
Beyond Belief: Carolyn Porco On Science & Religion, Part 1
Beyond Belief: Carolyn Porco On Science & Religion, Part 2
Beyond Belief: Carolyn Porco On Science & Religion, Part 3
“I know that I derive the same kind of spiritual fulfillment from what I do, being a planetary scientist, seeing our exploration of the solar system come to fruition. I get such a spiritual high from it that I don't even see the need for religion. People gravitate to religion to feel a connection to the underlying meaning of everything. Well, as a scientist you're always looking for the underlying meaning, and that to me is such a spiritual life, I wish people would open themselves up to that wonder.”
Articles and Links on Carolyn Porco
Carolyn Porco Biography at Edge.org
Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS)
Captain's Logs – Thoughts by Carolyn Porco
Carolyn Porco forecasts the future
IT Conversations – Explorer's Club Pop!Tech 2005 Presentation
Speakers of Substance – Leigh Bureau – Biography and information for Carolyn Porco
Dr. Porco's Scientific Research
NASA
Goes Deep
by Carolyn Porco
Carolyn
Porco: Keeping an Eye in Saturn
by Bjorn Carey
Carolyn Porco was 13 years old when she experienced her first ‘cosmic
connection’. She was on a rooftop in the Bronx, of all the unlikely
places, peering through a friend’s telescope when she caught her
first glimpse of Saturn. It was a pivotal moment for Porco, now leader
of the imaging team on the Cassini mission to the ringed world, as it
was then where she discovered her life’s passion.
Carolyn Porco Interviews
Meet
Carolyn Porco, the Scientist Who Made Saturn a Rock Star
by Patrick Di Justo
Enjoy all those electro pastel blue images of Saturn from NASA's Cassini
orbiter? You can thank Carolyn Porco, the planetary scientist who made
its moons into stars -- web stars, that is.
Porco is the leader of the imaging team for NASA's Cassini orbiter,
which is currently circling Saturn in what may be the last multibillion-dollar
planetary mission for a long time. (Yeah, budget cuts -- get used to
way smaller missions with lots of reusable parts.)
While working on the Voyager program as a graduate student at Cal Tech,
Porco became the spokesperson for Voyager's flybys of Uranus and Neptune.
She joined the Cassini project in 1990, and since the spacecraft's arrival
at Saturn in 2004 she's become the earthbound caretaker of Saturn's
moon Titan...
Wired News' Patrick Di Justo spoke with Porco, based in Boulder, Colorado,
about her dreams to find a Lake Michigan brimming with paint thinner
and why she doesn't need God.
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