Imaging Saturn; The Voyager Flights to Saturn
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. xiii, [1], 210 pages. Illustrations (some color). Ex-library with usual library markings. DJ is in a plastic sleeve. Henry S. F. Cooper Jr. was a writer who reached beyond the planet to pioneer reporting on space travel. Mr. Cooper, a descendant James Fenimore Cooper, was the author of eight books and a longtime writer for The New Yorker. Mr. Cooper celebrated scientific achievement, addressed scientific failure and demystified what was behind both. Mr. Cooper had hoped to join The New Yorker since he was a teenager. After college, at an editor’s invitation, he submitted two Talk of the Town articles — one on a cockroach hunter, the other on a meteorologist ensconced in Belvedere Castle in Central Park — but received no response. He then spent what he remembered as a few miserable months at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Finally, he was summoned by the editor, William Shawn, who was so impressed with his two articles that he simply asked, “When can you start?” He wrote for the magazine for 35 years. He also contributed to The New York Times Book Review and other publications. Derived from a Kirkus review: Veteran space reporter Cooper's account of the Voyager encounters with Saturn is an exploration of how scientists pursue knowledge. Here is what it was like to be in Pasadena, home of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, during November 1980 and August 1981: the critical days and hours, respectively, of the Voyager I and 2 flybys. There are peeks over-the-shoulders of the experts at the ""interactives"": the image-enhancing monitors that take the ""raws""--the digitalized photo data transmitted by the Voyager cameras--and generate the sharper, color-enhanced images that riveted the world. Saturn's; rings were ""braided,"" New moonlets were discovered. Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, was glimpsed to reveal new data on size and atmosphere (nitrogen, argon), while Encedalus, a more obscure moon revealed by Voyager 2, turned out to be a weirdly richly cratered and channeled specimen. Cooper has the sophistication to catch the scientific excitement and enterprise--the instantaneous spawning of new theories inspired by arriving data and pictures. As with previous Cooper books, one comes away with respect for the space agency and for the enrichment of knowledge from planetary probes. Condition: Good / Good.
Keywords: Space, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Saturn, Planets, Astronomy, Project Voyager, Saturn Probes, NASA, Space Exploration, Space Science
[Book #11421]
Price: $40.00