Carolyn Porco is a remarkable person. She once worked on the images returned from the amazing Voyager space probe, and she is currently the team lead for the CICLOPS imaging camera on board Cassini, the phenomenal probe that has been orbiting Saturn since July 2004. The images returned by Cassini… well, you know what I mean.
I have had the pleasure of hearing Carolyn talk on numerous occasions, most recently at Space Fest (she too works in Boulder, and we sat next to each other on the plane over to Arizona and had a great conversation). After her talk there, and after the standing ovation died down, Buzz Aldrin leapt up and said we need a United Nations of the Cosmos, and Carolyn should be the Secretary General.
Talk about high praise.
Most people will never get a chance to hear Carolyn talk, and that’s a pity. But now you can, because she spoke at TED, and they have the video of her talk online. I embedded the video below.
Enjoy.
October 4th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
BA,
Thank you VERY much for posting this.
I have found Carolyn one of our best speakers in science ever since I first saw her on TSN’s webcast of the Beyond Belief conference last November. Her work is unbelievably important and inspiring, and her presentation of all things cosmos has the power to inspire everyone available to hear it.
Thanks,
Nick
October 4th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
freelancer so well, thanks.
October 4th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Sorry, should of said freelancer said it so well, thanks.
October 4th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
BRAVO! I love listening to Carolyn talk. Her love of her work shines through in all of her talks.
The images she shares are simply stunning.
October 4th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Simply wonderful.
October 5th, 2007 at 12:34 am
I subscribe to the TED videos but had somehow missed that one so a big big thanks for bringing it to my attention. The only thing wrong with it was that it was orders of magnitude too short. She really is a good speaker and I could have listened to her for hours as I just love listening to people who are passionate about their science and can communicate that passion.
October 5th, 2007 at 3:08 am
Professor Carolyn Porco is one my all-time favorite scientists. I have a very (very) large video-library of space, astronomy and physics related documentaries and she features in many of them. In one of the BBC programs about voyager she describes being alone at mission control in the middle of the night watching the latest images of Saturn coming back from Voyager as it traveled away from the planet. She then realised that she was the first person ever to see the planet from that perspective. That was a touching moment. She is a very dedicated person and I eny her job! Thanks for posting this video.
October 5th, 2007 at 7:16 am
I’m sorry, I don’t feel the same way about Dr. Porco. She’s tried very hard to stop amateurs from using the Cassini Raw images to make mosaics and color pictures, considering the data her private property. Along with that, she refused to work with a group trying to make an Imax movie of the Cassini voyage, because she is part of a company trying to do the same thing. I don’t really thing that’s the right kind of space advocacy we need. I understand her testiness about when she was told on the lecture stand about the spokes, but attempting to block publication of amateur images in popular publications just doesn’t feel right for me:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=3817&hl=porco
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=4557&hl=imax+saturn
October 5th, 2007 at 7:17 am
Awesome, simply awesome.
October 5th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Also, according to Gregory Benford and Jon Lomberg, she put the kibosh on a Voyager-style message onboard Cassini, largely because she insisted on getting most of the credit.
I went to a talk she gave about the Cassini results so far (this was a year or so ago). She’s a good speaker. Not in Carl Sagan’s class (but then who is?), but still pretty good. We could do with more like her.
October 5th, 2007 at 9:41 am
[...] is in response to one of the BA’s blog entries. Not sure what it’s doing here, but I’ll leave it so Fraser can investigate. __________________ [...]
October 5th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Carolyn and T.E.D. Two of my most favorite things/people.
October 5th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Yes, Dr. Porco sent a email to the fellow who spent hours producing a massive mosaic of Saturn, which was even featured on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap041225.html
Whatever the content of that email was, it discouraged Mattias from doing any more work with the Cassini raw data:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=3086&view=findpost&p=69535
I thought it was quite disgusting behaviour from someone in such a privelleged position.
October 5th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Thanks to Phil for posting this podcast, and I’m glad folks enjoy it!
Unfortunately, several people took this opportunity to make statements that were seriously not correct so I should probably correct them.
1). About the Voyager-style Cassini message, I’m afraid you have the vector in entirely the wrong direction. I was not the one who put an end to that Project. It was Lomberg’s threat of a lawsuit to NASA that put an end to it, because he was worried he wouldn’t get the major credit. You didn’t read that in Benford’s book, did you? Of course not: they are good friends. And Benford was only peripherally associated with the Project and worked with us for only a few months. So, he wrote a story about which he knew essentially nothing about first hand, except what happened in the first 2 or 3 months of a project that went on for 2 years. His story was shamelessly lopsided and incomplete.
2) I have explained myself before on the topic of the public’s use of our images. In fact, one of the links above includes my very long letter of explanation, and then an offer to host amateur image products on the CICLOPS website. It’s unfortunate that a few of the individuals who visit the unmannedspaceflight.com site insist on spreading distortions of this issue. I know that many others understood completely. My thanks to them.
3) I have for a long time had in mind doing a film project of some sort — IMAX, HDTV, etc — with our Cassini images, and I honestly relayed those intentions to the individual who approached me (and just about everyone else) about an IMAX project. I simply wasn’t interested in working with him. I am under no obligation to work with anyone on any project. And he’s free to do what he wishes to do. There’s certainly no harm in that, and anyone who reads harm into that is obviously straining to do so.
I say about all these things: Give it a rest, and try to enjoy your life.
In the meantime, best to everyone, and good meeting up with you at SpaceFest, Phil. Thanks for posting the images and mentioning Buzz’s comments. A higher honor I will never receive.
Carolyn
October 6th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Thanks for the post, Phil. Carolyn Porco is one of my favorite “science geek talking heads”. She is absolutely radiant when she speaks about scientific discovery.
I teach high school science and am constantly trying to instill the sense of wonder and joy about scientific discovery that she projects so effortlessly. This has always been my main message to my students: it isn’t the “stuff” I am trying to teach, it is the joy of the process of finding out.
Whatever the other issues might be, I just don’t care. What she does put forth publicly is enormously positive in terms of the advancement of science knowledge in general and the ability of women to make (and be recognized for) enormous contributions in particular. I would love for her to come speak to my earth/space science students.
Keep it up.
October 7th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Thanks, Cope. While I may not be able to speak to your students, Why don’t you do the next best thing, and have them make a habit of visiting the CICLOPS website, where we post new images every day from Cassini? There — http://ciclops.org — they can find a new image every day, and also sign up for my announcements of our latest results or even sign up to be members of the CICLOPS Alliance (both on the right hand side of the home page).
Speaking of announcements, we have three releases coming out in the next week and a half. So, have them sign up soon, and visit our site sometime tomorrow when the show begins!
October 7th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
http://www.ted.com is great. The other talks are great too. There is a guy who explores deep caverns who proposed sending a probe to Europa and to sending miners to the moon. Great talk too!
October 12th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
[...] over at the Bad Astronomy blog, the issue has been discussed and “Outside In” named. Dr. Porco responds to the criticisms and there are links there [...]
October 12th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
I’m the IMAX filmmaker in question and was directed to this post. I find unfortunate the Dr. Porco (who is a compelling and passionate speaker about Cassini) does not see the value of working together (even if it’s just an endorsement) with everyone working to try to bring Cassini-Huygens to the public. We are not competing with each other, we are competing with all the junk and fluff in the media that stacks the deck against any Saturn news making more than a ripple.
I have addressed the issues raised here in my blog and proposed a solution – a Saturn Cassini-Huygens conference bringing together the scientists and engineers in the same room with the writers, artists, filmmakers, imagers, amateur astronomers and others passionate about this amazing mission. Surely, face to face, we can work this all out since we all want the same thing.
stephen v2
http://outsideinthemovie.com/blog/?p=67
January 13th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Dr. Porco you are a very good public speaker and I enjoyed your TED presentation. I have what may seem like a silly question, but, I was wondering if there is any possibility of saturn becoming a star? I have heard a number of theories on this topic and it is quite a prominent topic in science fiction. Would such an occurence, if it were even a remote possibility, cause any harm to our planet? Would it alter the atmosphere of it’s moons or simply destroy them? Good luck to you and your team mates in the future.
February 17th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
No chance that Saturn could become a star (which means, of course, become so dense and hot in its interior that it turns hydrogen into helium.) Not even Jupiter — denser, somewhat bigger than Saturn — could become a star. So, don’t worry about this one! Now, whether or not a small asteroid could hit the Earth and ruin the day of a few hundreds of millions of people and maybe more…well, that’s another question.