Saturn: Exploring the Mystery of the Ringed Planet

by Nicole Mortillaro

New views of Saturn -- provided by the Cassini-Huygens probe -- bring an extraordinary planet and its rings and moons into a whole new realm. Saturn is one of the five planets that star watchers can see with the naked eye. In 1997 the satellite Cassini-Huygens was launched with the sole purpose of studying Saturn and its moons and rings. Cassini is still in orbit, and in 2009 it witnessed Saturn's equinox firsthand, providing an entirely new perspective of the planet and a basis for amazing discoveries. Cassini has generated enormous scientific interest with its accomplishments so far,

Genres: Astronomy, Science, Space, Photography, Nonfiction

96 pages, Hardcover

First published September 23, 2010

About the author

NICOLE MORTILLARO is a sports editor and writer from Toronto.

Reviews

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet sweet images. Text is useful if you know next to nothing about the exploration of Saturn and its moons but can be otherwise ignored.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Saturn: Exploring the Mystery of the Ringed Planet" was a quick read with a fair amount of information contained within its pages. However, I was not surprised to discover that it was written by an amateur astronomer. There is nothing wrong with amateur astronomers, they do excellent work in forwarding mankind's knowledge of the universe, one even discovered Pluto after all. It is just that articles, books and other material written by them, tend to lack the background knowledge necessary to fully explain the phenomenons they are writing about. The depth just isn't there.

Also, this book was not organized very well. The major sections (Saturn: An Introduction, Pioneers to the Heavens, Hubble, Cassini-Huygens, Saturn's Grandeur, Titan, Majestic Rings, Curious Moons, and Saturn: Deeper Still) were acceptable, but the information contained with each section was not always presented in an organized manner to easily fascilitate the absorption of it. For example, during the chapter on Saturn's "Curious Moons", the author discuses the moon Iapetus, but gives background information on the moon, only after already talking about intimate features on its surface. In addition, throughout the chapter on Saturn's rings, the author often repeats the same information in several places. The organization in this chapter, as well as the ones entitled "Curious Moons" and "Titan", is lacking. In the later instance, the section was supposed to be focused on the largest moon of Saturn, Titan, however on the second page of this chapter, there is a paragraph thrown in which randomly talks about Saturn having a well defined ring system and tons of moons, all different, and then mentions one small one in particular, before jumping back to talking about Titan's liquid methane lakes. The moons, as a whole, were discussed in previous sections and even have a chapter all to their own later in the book. The disorganization is evident all throughout the book, making it difficult at times to be fully involved in reading it.

Finally, the author makes a few conclusions that are not fully backed by scientific evidence. First, she considers Titan to be almost Earth like, just because it has an atmosphere and liquid lakes. This statement is rather ridiculous, since Titan has a higher pressure, an atmosphere that would kill anything from Earth trying to breathe on its surface and the lakes are liquid methane (natural gas). Also, she fails to consider the many competing theories explaining many aspects of our galaxy's inhabitants. Finally, hand-in-hand with the last comment, the author does tend to present theories (small t, not big T) as Theories, thereby ignoring the lack of consensus among the astronomical field in regards to these explanations.

In conclusion, though I have my issues with this book, I do feel that it can be of use, in particular, by helping to get kids interested in astronomy. It doesn't deal with any large complicated theories, or complex math and this might serve as a jumping off point for further research. Even for a more serious student of astronomy, provided that the information presented in this book is backed-up by information retrieved from a more professional source, there should be no foreseeable problems with such students using it.

Finally, Nicole Mortillaro did make excellent use of the photographs at her disposal. She chose a wide range of them and they perfectly illustrate her points. It is primarily on the basis of these photographs that I give "Saturn: Exploring the Mystery of the Ringed Planet", a "3 stars" rating. It was enjoyable to look at and sometimes even engaging to read.

[David James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mortillaro primarily deals in children's books, and it shows in the text of this one. The writing is simplified enough to make it more of a young adult book than one for adults. Also, there are some nagging inconsistencies and outright errors that, while minor, will annoy knowledgable readers. But one doesn't get these sort of books for the articles, one picks them up to look at the pictures, and there she doesn't disappoint. The collection of images drawn from NASA and other sources is first rate. And Mortillaro's enthusiasm for the topic is infectious. A bit more accuracy would have bumped this up to four stars, but the shortcomings keep it at a three. But it's still worth a quick perusal.