Credit ESA

On Friday January 14 the Huygens Probe touched down on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.  Astronomy Ireland is delighted to be associated with "The Irish Times" for this high profile lecture.  The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn is one of the most ambitious efforts in planetary space exploration ever mounted.  Professor Murray was involved in developing the Cassini imaging system. The Huygens imaging system, took hundreds of photographs as it headed towards Titan as well as gathering loads of information on Titan's atmosphere and surface.  It then beamed its radio signals to the orbiter Cassini flying overhead and Cassini in turn sent the collected research data to earth.  Those images of a hitherto largely unknown world are fascinating.  Professor Murray will describe the mission and what it has achieved as well as showing new images and the latest up to date research results from this amazing world.

                       
                                   Titan Credit ESA

Remember IRELAND is a member of E.S.A. It is OUR space agency too so we can be proud. Some of the Cassini software was developed in Ireland for E.S.A. for example.

The pictures will appear in our magazine, please subscribe both to have a record of the historic landing and to support astronomy in Ireland. Click here

Details of the landing and on-going mission from E.S.A. are at
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/index.html

Other useful links:

    saturn.esa.int
    saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
    ciclops.org

Professor Carl D. Murray 
BSc in Applied Mathematics with Astrophysics, Queen Mary College, London (1977), PhD in Astronomy, Queen Mary College, London (1980)

• Member of the Cassini Imaging Team
• Co-investigator on the D-CIXS experiment on SMART-1
• Science Associate on Beagle 2

To book click here and say how many tickets you wish to book and include your name.                            
To get tickets by post send cash cash/cheque/postal order/bank draft and a SELF-ADDRESSED STAMPED (48cent) ENVELOPE to: Astronomy Ireland, P.O.Box 2888, Dublin 5.