The Horsehead Nebula, courtesy of Jean-Charles Cuillandre and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.
Evocative. That’s one word I can use to describe this amazing image of the Horsehead Nebula. Stunning is another. I think that’s what Dr. Jean-Charles Cuillandre, who works with the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope atop Mauna Kea, had in mind when he started a “pretty pictures” program of imagery.
Prosaically speaking, this is a cloud of gas and dust being lit up by a hot young star. It’s just a coincidence that the darkest part of the image, the Horse’s head, looks like a horse. What’s cooler to contemplate is what’s inside that horsey-looking cloud. Maybe a newborn star waiting to eat away the remaining cloud and burst forth with light in a few hundred thousand years? It’s possible.
Starbirth is like that — full of surprises. And areas of starbirth are among the hottest (literally) topics of astronomy research today. Lucky for us, scientists like Dr. Cuillandre are ready, willing, and able to give us “front row” seats for the festivities!
Twenty-three years ago this August, I covered my first planetary mission—the Voyager 2 flyby of Saturn—as a science correspondent for a newspaper. In a moment of sheer bravery, I approached the unknown of the outer solar system and found myself immersed in the fascinating scientific exploration of gas giant worlds. It’s fair to say that it changed my life in ways that are still to be measured. Today, a month or so short of the NEXT spacecraft to visit Saturn, there are so many things that are different about me, and I know there will be many new and different things scientists will find out about Saturn.
Saturn as seen by Voyager 2 in 1981, courtesy Solarviews
I don’t recall all the details of that first, frenzied week of science coverage back in 1981. Some images stand out in my mind: the first picture of the moon Enceladus, for example, and the worried looks on scientists’ faces when the camera scan platform jammed. I remember driving up to Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the first time and just sitting there in the car, drinking in the sights and sounds of a place that, for me, still held all the excitement of the lunar missions and the Mars explorations of the Viking era. I remember feeling slightly in awe of the scientists who carefully explained the images we were seeing, and even MORE in awe of the science writers around me, who seemed to be part of an exclusive club.
They welcomed me into that club, and I am proud to know and call “colleague” many of today’s best science writers. But back then, I was the equivalent of a college freshman, going to her first classes and hoping that she wouldn’t do the wrong thing or ask a stupid question. I grew up as a science writer during those planetary missions, learning from the best; ultimately I covered Voyager encounters of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and a couple of Mars missions: Pathfinder and the ill-fated Polar Lander. Each time I’d head out to JPL like a moth to a flame and spend days and weeks learning more about planetary science each time.
Saturn as seen by Cassini, courtesy Cassini Mission.
To be sure, in between times, I went back to school, studied planetary science more formally (along with astronomy and geology), and each time, the sessions at JPL became more like seminars where I could learn the “real world” examples of the things I studied in the classroom.
Sure, this is all about me right now—and MY experiences. You can find countless sites (like the two above) that discuss the science of these missions in more detail than I have room for in this little blog. But here, for me, it’s personal, because Voyager brought me more than Saturn: it opened my eyes to new ideas, new thoughts, a career that I hadn’t seriously considered before, and ultimately, new directions in life, new paths upon which I still trek. Science is great that way. It leads you to discovery; oftentimes it’s not always the discovery you expected.
