The Huygens probe scheduled to land on Saturn's giant moon Titan, Jan. 14th, "is another advanced spacecraft system that is a crucial part of the overall Cassini mission," according to the official NASA Cassini-Huygens website.

Whew! There's one bland, matter-of-fact description of a scientific and astronomical marvel. It is the kind of statement government agencies seem genetically predisposed to put out.

But, hey, this is an astronomy blog, not a government press release. Huygens is one amazing probe functioning on so many levels that its difficult to know where to begin to describe what it has already accomplished, and what it yet hopes to accomplish.

What I'll try to do here, in a decidedly non-technical way, is consider what the instrumentation engineers and scientists placed on the probe can do and just what the mission's astronomers hope Huygens will discover about Titan as it plunges into the unknown (but certainly hostile) environment on the perennially shrouded moon.

Here's a brief description of the six instruments and what each is designed to do.

1. The Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument (HASI). This is "a suite of sensors that will measure the physical and electrical properties of Titan's atmosphere," says NASA.

Scientists are interested in determining the density of Titan's atmosphere, the thermal properties of the atmosphere, and if the probe is able to land on Titan's surface and transmit back information, whether its surface is liquid and, if so, whether there is wave movement.

2. Doppler Wind Experiment (DWE). This is a pretty technical function. The DWE, by using an oscillator, will detect the Doppler shift as the probe parachutes down. The shift might possibly affect communications from the probe back up to the mother ship.

DWE will allow the communications suite to make adjustments and thereby provide a very stable communication frequency. In lay terms, the DWE will let the probe send the data it records to Cassini.

3. Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR). This instrument will detect radiation in the atmosphere as well as determine light properties from the Sun as these properties are diffused by Titan's cloudy atmosphere.

Scientists can calculate mass from such data.

4. Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS). This is a gas chemical analyzer designed to identify and measure chemicals in Titan's atmosphere.

One of the critical measurements it can perform is the composition (solid or liquid) of Titan's surface in the event of a safe landing.

5. Aerosol Collector and Pyrolyser (ACP). If you think Earth has a challenge with its ozone layer, imagine what Titan faces. ACP will be able to chemically analyze the aerosols in Titan's atmosphere. It will sample the aerosols during descent and "prepare the collected matter (by evaporation, pyrolysis and gas products transfer) for analysis" by the Huygens Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS), which it conveniently has transported for more than a billion miles.

6. Surface-Science Package (SSP). The SSP contains a number of sensors designed to determine the physical properties of Titan's surface at the point of impact, especially and most importanly whether the surface is solid or liquid. This is no small feat and needs to be done immediately should the environment the probe finds itself in upon landing be so corrosive as to degrade Huygens ability to continue conducting experiments and/or transmit data up to Cassini.

SSP employs an acoustic sounder, which as the probe descends will be "listening" for solid or liquid surfaces. If the surface is liquid, then other sensors mentioned above will kick in and measure Titan's density, temperature and light-reflecting properties, thermal conductivity, heat capacity, and electrical permittivity.

After 17 years, a few critical hours...

Some scientists and engineers from the European Space Agency have been working on the Huygens probe for 17 years, from mission statement to design construction, testing, launch (seven years ago), and now data harvest.

Jan. 14 isn't just circled on their calendar. They have only one day on their calendar. That date is part of their DNA, and nightmares.

The entire "drop" through Titan's atmosphere to its surface will take about two-and-a-half hours. If the probe is able to function after landing it will have approximately 30 minutes of battery life left to continue sending data to Cassini.

Retransmission from Cassini to Earth will take from 68 to 84 minutes between the spacecraft and the ground station. Cassini's orbit around Saturn must be such that it has a clear path to beam data to Earth.

The distance of this transmission you ask? It will vary from 8.6 to 10.6 Astronomical Units (An AU is the distance of the Earth to the Sun).

The power source Cassini will use to do this: Oh, a solar-powered battery with a charge about as powerful as that in your electronic wristwatch.

It's the end of the year and what better way for stargazers to close it out than by viewing the best meteor shower of 2004?

The Geminid meteor shower occurs mid-December every year. Usually it comes in second to the mid-August Perseid meteor shower for eliciting "oohs" and "ahs." (There's the warm-nights bias factor, plus more observers on vacation in the summer).

Not this year. The Perseids eat Geminids cosmic dust. Peaking on Dec. 13 after 10 p.m. ET - with no moon - the Geminids pull into first-place for viewing.

The moon will be at new phase Dec. 11. On the peak night, the moon will be a skinny crescent, low in the west-southwest at dusk and setting before 6 p.m. That means the sky will be dark and moonless for the balance of the night, making for perfect viewing conditions. [According to British meteor astronomer Alastair McBeath.]

The best time to look is tonight. If you stay outside for a few hours around midnight expect to see dozens-to-hundreds of "shooting stars," (with the usual caveat -- provided there are no clouds).

Where should you look? Anywhere, says NASA.

Geminids streak all over the sky. Trace some backwards: they all lead to a radiant point in the constellation Gemini. This year the radiant lies next to Saturn - a beautiful coincidence. Gemini and Saturn are high overhead at midnight, easy to find.

Now, about earthgrazers. The first dark hours after sunset are when Earthgrazers appear, says Joe Rai, writing for Space.com

Earthgrazers are long, bright shooting stars that streak overhead from a point near to even just below the horizon. Such meteors are so distinctive because they follow long paths nearly parallel to our atmosphere

The constellation Gemini is the area of the sky at which Earth's atmosphere bumps into the stream of debris coming off the comet (or asteroid - see below) and hence the name Geminids for the "shooting stars." Gemini begins to come up above the east-northeast horizon just after twilight. So that's when you might see the first  Geminids. It's this time that offers the best chance of catching an earthgrazer - a streaking meteor running horizontally to your field of view.

It's also the best time to bring young children outside who have school the next day.

Now, for some history of the Geminids.

Astronomers know that the source of the shower is asteroid 3200 Phaethon. It has a cloud of dust trailing it and that's what the Earth bumps into, like a bug on the windshield of a fast-moving car. When tiny bits of dust traveling at 80,000 mph hit our atmosphere they flame out in glowing meteors (visible under cloudless, moonless skies).

NASA thinks that:

Asteroid 3200 Phaethon might have gotten a tail, of sorts, by bumping into another asteroid. 3200 Phaethon spends much of its time in the asteroid belt. Hitting a neighbor could have created a cloud of debris that follows 3200 Phaethon around the solar system.

That's one idea. Another is that 3200 Phaethon is a comet - a dead one. It died from too much sun. Every year and a half, 3200 Phaethon dives inward from the asteroid belt. Passing only 2 million miles from Earth's orbit, it approaches the sun closer than Mercury does. Repeated sunbaking could have vaporized all of 3200 Phaethon's ice long ago, leaving behind a rocky skeleton with a dribble of comet dust in its wake.

Space. com says that "locations from Europe and North Africa east to central Russian and Chinese longitudes are in the best position to catch the very crest of the shower, when the rates conceivably could exceed 120 per hour, or two every minute.

Predictions for select cities from Space.com -

When sinker ball pitcher Derrick Lowe takes the mound for the Boston Red Sox Wed. evening Oct, 27, look for the mother of all sinker balls to be served up at 8:14 p.m. CST. Weather permitting, a total lunar eclipse will be visible to fans at Busch Memorial Stadium

Should Fox Sports not point its camera up in the sky, look outside your front door to the east and you'll see the beginning of a total lunar eclipse, the first ever to happen during a World Series game.

Wednesday's eclipse favors the Western Hemisphere with most Americans getting a ringside seat.

Baseball is a game driven by statistics so, thanks to space. com, here are a few stats as to why there hasn't been an eclipse during a World Series game:

This notable Fall Classic owes partly to the fact that from 1903 through 1970, the World Series was only played during the daytime (The World Series was not played in 1904.)

In 1971, night Series games were introduced. But no total lunar eclipse since that time has occurred at just the right time.

There were two close calls during the 1980s.

In 1985, a total lunar eclipse on Oct. 28 came the day after the final game of the World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals. The following year, another total eclipse occurred on Oct. 17. But that was the day before the start of the Series between the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox.

The Sox missed the eclipse and the win in 1986. Not so in 2004. Lowe's sinker will repeatedly disappear from the field of vision of Cardinal batters as readily as its heavenly counterpart will disappear in the starry night. That big black empty space up there will be the number of runs the Cardinals score.

Go Sox. Even the stars are aligned for a championship!

The most memorable line from the 1950’s comedy series “The Honeymooners” starring Jackie Gleason is unquestionably: “One of these days Alice! Pow-zoom, up to the moon!”

But this month, for backyard astronomers at least, we'll be echoing Ralph Cramden's jubilant phrase: “How sweet it is.”

There will be a total lunar eclipse - at a civilized hour, at a time of year (in the US) when the night air is crisp but not cold, and when humidity is low to boot. And there is no need for eye protection. “How sweet it is.”

The eclipse will be high but not too high (30-35 degrees) in the eastern sky. Taking the kids out to see it won’t cause them to sleep through classes the next day. The only wrinkle, a small one, is on the west coast since the eclipse starts a tad before sunset. But by 6:45 p.m., PDT, the moon will look as good (or rather, not look at all) in Hollywood, Calif. as in Hollywood, Florida.
On Oct. 27 (please, no clouds), anyone in North and South America will be able to look up at the night sky and say: “How sweet it is.”

Stages of an eclipse

There are stages to an eclipse. As it commences, it will start looking redder and dimmer around 8:00 p.m. (EDT). Look north-northeast above the horizon and by 8:06 p.m. (EDT) the moon will have moved into the northern half of Earth's outer shadow - what astronomers call the penumbra. During this time the moon begins to dim and turn a copper-red because the only sunlight reaching it is sunlight passing through Earth's atmosphere.

At exactly 9:14 p.m. (EDT) the moon will start to disappear from sight (entering the umbra). It takes the moon several hours to pass completely through the umbra. Totality - when the moon is completely dark - begins at 10:23 p.m. It will last an unhurried 1 hour and 22 minutes. (Totality varies depending on the position of the observer, the Earth, and the planet's shadow. My figures are for a latitude of 40 degrees.)

The most exciting minutes will be those just before totality at 10:23 p.m. By 10:15 p.m. (EDT) a fingernail slice of white moon will be visible at lunar northeast, soon to go dark, a black sphere with an eery presence floating amidst the twinkle of stars.

The total eclipse will end at 11:45 p.m. (EDT) The moon re-emerges and is completely visible at 12:45 a.m. (EDT). At this point the moon will again seem reddish, but not quite as deep a hue as earlier in the evening. (See 'Shine on harvest moon' for an explanation.)

Shadow lessons

Bear in mind (and this is a good geometry lesson for the mathematically inclined), Earth's shadow has two parts, the umbra and penumbra. "The umbra is the region of total shadow - if we were within this portion of the Earth's shadow, we could not see the Sun at all. The penumbra is the region of partial shadow - if we were in the penumbra, we would see part of the Sun peeking around the edge of the Earth."

Just remember the lesson from earth science class: stand outside (on a sunny day of course) and extend your hand at eye level over smooth ground. The shadow cast by your hand has both an umbra and penumbra. The higher you hold your hand, the more obvious the penumbra will become.

The word "eclipse" comes from the Greek word ekleipsis, which means abandonment. It was not a happy word, per se. It aroused deep, primitive fear, and uncertainty.

Not so today. Our star, our planet, and our satellite engage in a perpetual orbital dance. We three are closest of gravitational partners.

Ok, so the harvest moon coming to the northern latitudes at the end of the month just doesn't mean what it did to past generations. Today, in the US, Canada, and most of Northern Europe, maybe three-to-five percent of the population are farmers. No one needs the extra light for overtime in the fields.

But that doesn't change the fact that the time between sunset and moonrise on successive nights in late September is shorter than at any other time of the year.

Even if we live in the most urban setting, we can check out the eastern horizon after sunset from Sept. 27-30 and revel in the moonlight.

The view is one of the most compelling in nature. The amplitude of the orange-tinged orb seems animate, as if freezing earthlings in their tracks. Some advice: find a high point over a flat horizon – the ocean, a knoll on the Great Plains, a mountain top, even the top floor of a skyscraper. (And hang in there Aussies! A similar phenomenon to the harvest moon is observed in southern latitudes at the spring equinox on about March 21.)

The harvest moon is always the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. On the 27th, the full moon rises at sunset per the norm, but then, for several nights after that, it will appear just 25 minutes or so later each night at 40 degrees latitude (and can even rise earlier than the previous night above 60 degrees). This stems from the tilt of Earth at this time of year. There are key variations in our satellites’ travels across the sky and around our planet. In the northern latitudes, September is when these variations are most visible. (The full moon following the harvest moon, which exhibits the same phenomena in a lesser degree, is called the hunter's moon. But more on that, and a total lunar eclipse next month in a future blog.)

Why does the moon look bigger on first appearance over the horizon?

It is an old lunar mystery known as the "moon illusion." As the moon “peeks” over the rim of the earth, we see it swell to enormous size and then, in just a few hours climb “up” and (as the Earth rotates on its axis) appear to melt like a giant snowball.

Timothy Ferris offers an explanation in his book, "Seeing in the Dark." When confronted with a phenomenon beyond its sensory experience, the human mind creates its own impression and an object near the horizon is perceived as larger than something high in the sky. Psychologists also say that the moon looks bigger on first rising because primitive centers in the brain react to it as a threat due to it’s being on a horizontal plane, “eye-to-eye.” The threat diminishes as the plane moves from horizontal to vertical.

More empirically, the distorting influence of atmosphere is the main factor. We look through much more air – and pollution - when the moon is on the horizon, than when it is high overhead.

One final note for the romanticists. Bring an auditory dimension to your moonlight stroll, be it in city, suburb, or country. Hum the chorus from the classic show tune “Harvest Moon.”

Shine on, shine on harvest moon up in the sky. I ain't had no lovin' since April, January, June, or July. Snowtime ain't no time to stay outdoors and spoon. So shine on, shine on harvest moon, for me and my gal.

As day follows dawn, space flight follows the telescope.

James Oberg points this out in his article in the September issue of Astronomy magazine. He takes it as a simple rule of our human thought-adventure with space.

Galileo looked up and saw craters on the moon. Eventually, we would want to travel where we could see, and, albeit centuries later, we walked on the moon.

Mr. Oberg cites a set of complex mathematical computations made in the 17th century by Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736-1813), an Italian-French mathematician as indicative of how astronomy can give a boost to space flight.

Lagrange’s calculations resulted in what are called the Lagrange Points. These points measure where a spinning object, in gravitational relation to two other larger spinning objects, would stop spinning and remain stable.

Such a point, when out in space, would be one sweet spot to park a telescope.

NASA is using Lagrange’s calculations to locate where it will orbit the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), reports Astronomy. Plans are for the new light bucket, which NASA will launch in 2011, to “hang out” in 2011 four times farther away from Earth than the moon, where the gravity of the Sun and Earth merge to "produce a relatively stable gravity field." NASA calls this the SEL.2 spot.

Now, I don’t understand the math NASA is using (it really is rocket science). But I do understand the pull of Lagrange's logic as it relates to the further exploration of space.

The mathematician "discovered five special points in the vicinity of two orbiting masses where a third, smaller mass can orbit at a fixed distance from the larger masses. More precisely, the Lagrange Points mark positions where the gravitational pull of the two large masses precisely cancels the centripetal acceleration required to rotate with them."

Once the JWST is up and orbiting at SEL.2 "reusable space tugs" and "the energy to get to that point in space" could be tapped. Astronomical instruments could then give way to explorer craft, launched towards asteroids or flybys of Mars, suggests Oberg.

Oberg concludes his article: "It's curious, but just as it has in centuries past, the new astronomy of tomorrow will point the way for exploring space."

Lagrange, space tugs, orbiting space telescopes – just do the math.

August’s "night of the shooting stars” approaches.

The annual Perseid meteor shower begins this weekend. And though it takes a few days to really get going. why not get started Saturday evening for a few hours.

The first meteors will provide a smattering of light streaking across the night sky, building up to their peak on the night of Aug. 11, after 10 p.m. and continuing through dawn on Aug. 12, after which the Perseids dribble off, a few per hour over the next few nights.

There's good news on the always critical moon front – our sometimes luminous satellite is fully cooperating by not being in the night sky during the peak shower. Dark moonless skies provide a great backdrop to the Perseids.

I’ve written about the Perseids before so I don’t have too much to say about them other than that they are a focal point in my astronomical year. I’ve put in for vacation time and plan to take the 12th off so I can stay up all night on the 11th. (August is warm, even in New England.) This will let me drive well away from metropolitan Boston’s light pollution, find a dark field, and lie on the top of my Subaru Outback, toes pointed northeast, to watch the speeding travelers in our neck of the universe.

A decidedly unromantic take on the Perseids is to think of them as bugs bouncing off our planet’s windshield (atmosphere). Tiny grains of sand collide with our atmosphere at 132,000 m.p.h. as our planet crosses orbits with them from a northeasterly direction.

Once heated in the atmosphere, they are visible for only a second or two but their incandescent images linger in memory much longer.

Maybe it is the warm, summer nights coupled with for many, the fact that when a child, a parent took you out to see them. Perhaps for the first time, you had a glimpse of mom or dad behaving like a child too - "oohing" and "aahingd" at the meteors whizzing in the starry night.

More meteor facts.

It’s been almost two weeks since the Cassini probe pulled off its orbital two-step through the rings of Saturn.

The astronomy community exuberantly viewed initial photos beamed to mother ship Earth across more than two billion miles of our solar system. Cries of “compelling,” “unexpected,” “outstanding” greeted each download. Then, sotto voce, the already familiar refrain: “They raise more questions than answers,” about Saturn, its rings, and the tantalizingly mysterious moon Titan.

Scientists never expected signs of life. They do hope to find organic chemicals that might serve as the building blocks of life.

My first reactions to the pictures, on the other hand, were not the ones I had expected, not even close. I guess my frame of reference was tied to the first photos from the Hubble Telescope that amazed both me and the world. These are not Hubble photos, yet, anyway.

The “Hubble effect” had me looking long and hard off into a galactic wonderland, glimpses of miracles in starlight.

The Cassini “effect” has me thumbing through my trusty astrophysic’s text, bonding with the electromagnetic spectrum, as I force myself to think in long and short-wavelengths, high and low-frequencies so that I get a better sense of how, and therefore what, Cassini has begun to tell us.

Besides the visible spectrum, Cassini “sees” in ultraviolet and infrared. Its images reflect and interpret Saturn in ways our senses could only imagine. (Trust me, it will be primarily interpretations, not facts, that result from the Cassini. Already, what’s been recorded is too novel for previous predictions and hypothoses to stand up.)

Specifically, pictures coming back from Cassini in the infrared (which allows for “looking through dense cloud cover”) and ultraviolet, (which allows for seeing minute, “invisible” properties of an object) spectrum forced me into considering the role radiation plays in communicating information.

Cassini’s pictures, taken with the most elaborate and sophisticated instrumentation ever sent aloft, humbled me when I thought how little the information that streams along the visible spectrum actually is when compared to the full electromagentic spectrum, and how much more there is to learn outside what I can see with my own eyes. (The infrared and ultraviolet bracket the narrow visible spectrum with which we actually see. There are also xrays, gamma rays, and radio waves.)

Cassini can "see" in wavelengths of light and energy that the human eye cannot. The instruments on the spacecraft can "feel" things about “magnetic fields and tiny dust particles that no human hand could detect.”

The remote sensing instruments can calculate measurements from a great distance. This set includes both optical and microwave sensing instruments including cameras, spectrometers, radar and radio.

The Nasa/JPL site offers the following description of Cassini’s sensors:

In many ways, the spacecraft's instruments can be classified to the way human senses operate. Your eyes and ears are "remote sensing" devices because you can receive information from remote objects without being in direct contact with them. Your senses of touch and taste are "direct sensing" devices. Your nose can be construed as either a remote or direct sensing device. You can certainly smell the apple pie across the room without having your nose in direct contact with it, but the molecules carrying the scent do have to make direct contact with your sinuses. Cassini's instruments can be classified as remote and microwave remote sensing instruments, and fields and particles instruments. These are all designed to record significant data and take a variety of close-up measurements.

Yes, I know there is much to learn about Saturn, and the almost daily surprises confronting NASA and JPL astronomers, especially from its moon Titan, that bigger than Mercury object whirling about Saturn in our solar system.

But first and foremost, thanks to pictures taken at wavelengths that only a bat or insect could see, there is a much richer way of perceiving the world around us. We can delight in the expectation that distant planetary mysteries, and proximate phenomena here on earth, will open up before our very “eyes.”

Ever since the astronomy bug bit me I’ve been hooked on Saturn. It is by far my favorite backyard telescope target, even more than the four moons of Jupiter or the stars of Trapezium (four of them) inside the heart of the Orion Nebula.

It takes Saturn 29 years to orbit the sun. Twice in that cycle it comes closest to earth for the best viewing (last summer was one of those times). Now, with the Cassini probe soon to be literally orbiting Saturn, the pictures should be awesome! (See Cassini orbit insertion.)

Be still my beating heart as we consider what Cassini is going to show us starting with the first pictures to be sent back late Wednesday and early Thursday morning. It takes 1 hour and 23 minutes for a message from Cassini to reach Earth. At precisely 10:56 p.m. (EDT) the orbiter will fire its rockets and begin to brake in preparation for entering orbit around Saturn.

I’ve written on Saturn before, specifically how it's the "lord of the rings." I’ve characterized Saturn's gossamer bands as the best looking dirt and ice in the universe, a mere 30-50 feet thick in some places, with a width of around 300,000 miles.

One of the questions the astronomy community hopes the Cassini project will more fully answer is how these rings appear so bright from such a great distance (Jupiter has rings and so does Neptune and Uranus, but try to see them with an amateur telescope – you can't.)

As we begin our coverage of Cassini's exploration of Saturn, let’s make a comparison. Below is one of the "best" pictures to date of the rings. It is a "detail" of the rings and was taken just last May by NASA's Hubble telescope. Let’s see what images the orbiting satellite Cassini sends us on Thursday morning and compare them to the Hubble picture.

One final point. See the large gap, or break in the rings? This gap is called the Cassini division and is named after the Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini who discovered it in 1676 and in whose honor the satellite and current mission was named.

Be sure to read other Monitor coverage of Cassini: A slingshot ride through Saturn's marvel of ice, dust; Rings, as you've never seen 'em

Remember as a child walking by some big old mansion just around the block from where you lived. You’d never been inside. It loomed large in your young imagination, beckoning.

Did anyone live there? If the door suddenly swung open, what would it look like inside? Should you go up and ring the doorbell and ask if you could come in?

And then one day, actually one night, Halloween, and a chance to go inside fell in your lap. You were brave enough to go up, ring the doorbell, stammer out “trick or treat,” and hopefully sneak a peek inside. You were asked to come inside.

Well, the galactic equivalent of that childhood experience happens next week. After a seven-year space flight covering more than 2.2 billion miles, the Cassini space probe approaches Saturn, our solar system’s second largest planet.

The small craft begins a four-year tour of duty circling Saturn. It will orbit the ringed planet 76 times, studying 7 of the 31 known moons circling the lord of the rings. Cassini will make 45 flybys of Titan, the Saturn moon of most interest to astronomers. Liquids have been detected on the giant moon’s surface (it’s bigger than the planet Mercury) which might sustain “life." Cassini has 12 different sets of scientific instruments crammed on board. Telescopes and cameras can read nearly every wavelength from radio to ultraviolet.

And just like it took courage to go up and ring the doorbell of that neighborhood mansion on Halloween night, NASA scientists and program coordinators have to summon up courage as they send the probe on a close encounter with Saturn’s rings. Cassini will literally pass through gaps in the rings twice in a 96-minute engine burn before it settles into orbit around Saturn. Bear in mind the rings are made up of dust and ice (some chunks as big as a house) kept in rotation by gravity and the odd small meteor or orbiting “shepherd moon” sweeping out debris between the rings.

Questions abound!

• Just what makes up the interior of the planet?
• Does it have a rocky core? Is it metallic?
• How powerful is its magnetosphere (a magnetic shield that affects, some would say protects, a planets atmosphere from harmful solar radiation)?
• What is the gravitational interplay between Saturn’s many moons and its prominent ring system? By studying the rings close up and how they formed will we unlock further clues in planet formation throughout our galaxy and in galaxies beyond our own? Cassini will let us do this at different wavelengths.
• What about the odd auroras observed on Saturn, what kind of magnetic force causes them?

And then there’s all that dust and ice circling the planet, making those beautiful, sunlight reflecting rings. What are they made of? Does the material come from our galaxy or, perhaps a supernova exploding millions, maybe billions of years ago, before being sucked up in the gravitational interplay between Saturn, it’s moons, our solar system's biggest planet Jupiter, and the sun?

For the next month this blog will “grab the rings,” reporting and reflecting on what we discover about this gas-giant in our corner of the cosmos.