Saturn

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet Saturn with its rings of ice and rock and over 60 moons. In 1610, Galileo used an early telescope to observe Saturn, one of the brightest points in the night sky, but could not make sense of what he saw: perhaps two large moons on either side. When he looked a few years later, those supposed moons had disappeared. It was another forty years before Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens solved the mystery, realizing the moons were really a system of rings. Successive astronomers added more detail, with the greatest leaps forward in the last forty years. The Pioneer 11 spacecraft and two Voyager missions have flown by, sending back the first close-up images, and Cassini is still there, in orbit, confirming Saturn, with its rings and many moons, as one of the most intriguing and beautiful planets in our Solar System.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Carolin Crawford 19 episodes
  Institute of Astronomy and Fellow of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge
• Michele Dougherty 2 episodes
  Imperial College London
• Andrew Coates 3 episodes
  Mullard Space Science Laboratory at UCL

Reading list

• Titan from Cassini-Huygens
  Robert Brown, Jean-Pierre Lebreton and J. Hunter Waite (eds.) (Springer, 2009) Google Books →
• Saturn from Cassini-Huygens
  Michele Dougherty, Larry Esposito and Stamatios Krimigis (eds.) (Springer, 2009) Google Books →
• Saturn
  T. Gehrels and M. Matthews (University of Arizona Press, 1984) Google Books →
• The Cambridge Guide to the Solar System
  Kenneth R Lang (Cambridge University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• Titan Unveiled: Saturn's Mysterious Moon Explored
  Ralph Lorenz and Jacqueline Mitton (Princeton University Press, 2008) Google Books →
• McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science & Technology
  McGraw-Hill (McGraw-Hill, 2010) Google Books →
• The Cassini-Huygens Visit to Saturn: An Historic Mission to the Ringed Planet
  Michael Meltzer (Springer, 2015) Google Books →
• Titan: Interior, Surface, Atmosphere and Space Environment
  I. Muller-Wodarg, C. A. Griffith, E. Lellouch and T. E. Cravens (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2014) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b06vmr1m

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06vmr1m

Auto-category: 523.4 (Planets and their satellites)