Huachuca Astronomy Club—Speakers
Dr. Jonathan I. Lunine


Dr. Jonathan Lunine gave a presentation to the Huachuca Astronomy Club on July 10, 2009. Photo by Del Gordon

Dr. Jonathan I. Lunine is Professor of Planetary Sciences and Physics and a Galileo Circle Faculty Fellow at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He is the David Baltimore Distinguished Visiting Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His research interests center broadly on the formation and evolution of planets and planetary systems, the nature of organics in the outer solar system, and the processes that lead to the formation of habitable worlds. He is an interdisciplinary scientist on the Cassini mission to Saturn, and on the James Webb Space Telescope, as well as co-investigator on the Juno mission under development for launch to Jupiter. He serves on the US National Academy of Sciences Committee leading the Decadal Survey for Astronomy and Astrophysics. Dr. Lunine is the author of over 200 scientific papers and of the books Earth: Evolution of a Habitable World (Cambridge Atmospheric and Space Science Series), and Astrobiology: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Pearson Addison-Wesley, 2005). He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Geophysical Union, which awarded him the James B. Macelwane medal. Other awards include the Harold C. Urey Prize (American Astronomical Society) and Ya. B. Zeldovich Award of COSPAR's Commission B. He earned a B.S. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Rochester in 1980, followed by M.S. (1983) and Ph.D. (1985) degrees in Planetary Science from the California Institute of Technology.


Exploration of Titan
The Once and Future Earth

According to Cassini data, Saturn’s moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth.
Artist rendering: © Kees Veenenbos

On Friday, July 10, 2009, we were honored to hear a presentaion by Dr. Jonathan I. Lunine about the mysterious moon of Saturn, called Titan. The presentation was given in collaboration with Cohise College.

A billion miles from the Sun lies a world shrouded in haze, where the winds blow organic grains into dunes and ripple the surfaces of vast seas of methane. Saturn's moon Titan is a lifeless laboratory of pre-biotic organic chemistry—or is it? We know nothing of the full range of possibilities for self-organizing chemistry—life—and Titan might be a place where "weird life" exists. Titan's methane cycle is more an analog of the Earth's far future—when the brightening Sun strips water off our home world—than it is of the stable hydrosphere of today. Beyond the epic explorations of Cassini-Huygens, what will the space faring nations do to reveal this secrets of this distant and enigmatic world?


Dr. Jonathan Lunine



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