Landing on Titan and the Deep Impact comet mission

Professor Ian Morison from Jodrell Bank returned to Knutsford SciBar after his very successful visit in December on “Hunting Aliens”.

What an interesting job Professor Morison has; straight from hunting aliens to shooting comets. He brought us bang up to date on the results coming in from the very recent landing on Saturn’s moon Titan.

He also covered the other major astronomic human event, the “shooting” of a large copper bullet into a comet, to find out what it’s made of inside. The pictures were magnificent and Ian’s exposition was humorous, witty and very informative. His description of methane rain falling on and eroding mountains made of water ice at -170 C and forming rivers of liquid methane flowing to methane oceans – fabulous! The pictures of the explosion and our “missile” manoeuvring its way into the path of the speeding comet were sensational as was the close up photo of the “human” face on Mars showing it made of natural hills etc., not made by any intelligence.