Tuesday, April 5, at 1:00 in room 2250, Bonnie Buratti from NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech will be speaking on "Titan: an Earth in
Deep Freeze."

A giant moon in orbit around Saturn seems an unlikely place for Earth-like
processes to be occurring. But that is exactly what is happening on Titan.
The only moon with a thick atmosphere, Titan has lakes, clouds, windstorms
and dunes, floods and flowing rivers, and perhaps volcanoes and a subsurface water ocean.

This talk is an overview of recent discoveries about Titan from the Cassini
spacecraft and what this cold moon in the outer reaches of the Solar System
can teach us about the Earth. It is intended to be understandable to a
general audience. 

Bonnie J. Buratti received a doctorate in astronomy and space sciences from
Cornell University and is currently a senior research scientist at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. With expertise on the formation and evolution of
the small icy bodies in the outer Solar System, she has taken leadership
roles on the Cassini Mission to Saturn and the New Horizons Mission to Pluto (the demoted planet). She has served in an advisory capacity on NASA
committees and was awarded the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for her work on Cassini.