Dr. Jeffrey Cuzzi

At our May 26 General Meeting the title of the talk will be:

What Have We Learned from the Cassini/Huygens Mission to Saturn? - a presentation by Dr. Jeffrey Cuzzi of NASA Ames Research Center.

Cassini is now well into its third year at Saturn. The Huygens entry probe landed on Titan in January 2005, but since then, many new discoveries have been made on Titan’s surface, and elsewhere in the system, by the orbiter as it continues its four – year tour. In addition, new understanding is emerging from analysis of the earliest obtained data.

In this talk, Dr. Jeffrey Cuzzi will review the key science highlights so far on the giant planet, its spectacular rings, its small but very diverse icy moons, and its planet – sized moon Titan.

Jeff Cuzzi’s main interests are in planetary system origin and evolution. Jeff was invited to join the Voyager Imaging Team in 1978 as its “rings expert”, and led the planning of all Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune encounter ring imaging observations. He received several awards from NASA and the AIAA for his research on planetary rings, and in 1989 he was selected as Interdisciplinary Scientist for Rings on the NASA – ESA Cassini – Huygens mission. Together with Ellis Miner and Randii Wessen, he authored the book, “Planetary Ring Systems”. Jeff is also actively studying how fluid dynamics and turbulence might have played a role in accumulating the very earliest primitive objects (comets and asteroids) such as reflected in the meteorite record.