According to Colwell

On Monday Cassini had its closest encounter to date with the intriguing moon Enceladus, which spews water vapor from a number of points along the infamous “tiger stripe” fissures over its south pole. The closest approach to the Moon was up near the equator, and the trajectory of the spacecraft took skimming along the perimeter of the boundaries of Enceladus’s geysers. Turning back to look at the south pole as it flew away, Cassini had to maneuver quickly to capture clean pictures. The imaging team has now been able to piece together and “navigate” the images, meaning they have figured out where on Enceladus each image is. Tying this together with earlier work by Joe Spitale, Carolyn Porco, and others on the imaging team that identified various jets from the tiger stripes, they have now given us the first close-up views of two source regions.

The Damascus Sulcus region of Enceladus, with the location of two geysers indicated.

Image Credit: JPL/NASA/SSI

The Baghdad Sulcus source region in one of Enceladus’s tiger stripes.

Image Credit: JPL/NASA/SSI

Heath Ledger totally disappears into the role of the Joker, helped by creepy makeup and greasy hair, but mainly through a transformative performance. This makes it easier to watch The Dark Knight, without thinking of Ledger’s untimely death. Which is not to say that it is an easy movie to watch. Dark from start to finish, punctuated by psychopathic killings at the hands of the Joker and the mechanical rasping of Batman’s voice. The movie is intense and gripping, and as a bonus creates the villain Two-Face from picture-perfect D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).

Christian Bale, as Batman, benefits from twice the sage advice as most superheroes: he has both Michael Caine (as butler Alfred) and Morgan Freeman (as Lucius, Batman’s version of 007’s gadget-maker Q) to offer guidance on ethics, bad guys, women and life. Watching the movie I couldn’t help thinking how nice it would be to have a couple of senior wise friends ready to whip up a nice breakfast or a space-age gizmo at a moment’s notice, especially if they were played by Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman and were being paid handsome salaries from my billion dollar empire. But I digress.

This is definitely the creepiest Joker the Batman franchise has produced. His stated goal is not money but mayhem. He derides schemers and planners, but this rings a bit hollow when his various plans for mayhem obviously required a tremendous amount of advance planning and scheming. Somehow, for example, he single-handedly wired a hospital for a textbook example of how to completely demolish a building with no one noticing him or the bombs. Ultimately, Batman must make a noble sacrifice for the greater good which is in turn affirmed in an admittedly surprising (or I guess I’m more cynical than even Batman) ethical collective act. The screenplay by Jonathan and Christopher Nolan (who directed) has to ignore a critical point in order for this to work, but it’s a minor flaw in an otherwise compelling action flick.

I’ve been off-line for a bit due to a combination of European travel, interrupted internet access, and illness. We’re just finishing up the Symposium “Saturn After Cassini-Huygens” at Imperial College in London. The symposium is linked to a book of the same name that will be published in mid-2009. I’m the lead author on the chapter on the structure of Saturn’s rings. Others have the more difficult task of explaining that structure. Of course, Cassini is now into its “Equinox Mission” which runs through mid-2010, so the “After” in the title of the book is a bit misleading.

The big news from Cassini this week is the confirmation that there is liquid on the surface of Titan. The lake was identified by the spectral signature of liquid ethane which is in solution with methane and other compounds in the lake in Titan’s south polar region. Suspected to be a lake based on its appearance, this confirms it is in fact liquid, making Titan only the second object after Earth to have stable liquid on the surface. Many other suspected lakes exist in the north polar region where it is currently late winter. Those were identified by radar measurements, while the new identification comes from the Cassini Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS). Future observations as Cassini continues its mission should identify more lakes.

The more distant future may see more dramatic observations as both NASA and ESA are considering major missions dedicated to Titan exploration.

I was prepared for the incredible silliness of this movie. I was also prepared to have slick Abba pop tunes rattling incessantly around my head for days after. What caught me off guard was the paucity of punchy pop melodies. Aside from the title song and “Dancing Queen”, none of the songs lingered in my head for one moment past the final beat. And I’m a sucker for catchy show tunes: I once listened to the song “Downtown” by Petula Clark 53 times in a row. I never listened to Abba when they were first raging across the pop music landscape, but what I knew (or thought I knew) of them was that theirs were addictive, catchy and slick songs. Now I know I’m not an Abba kind of guy. And judging from the demographics of the audience at the showing I went to, not many guys are Abba kind of guys. Males were outnumbered roughly 20 to 1 (I estimated 80 women for the four men I saw, counting me).

There’s no faulting the performers in this movie. They throw themselves into the syrupy concoction with an almost manic abandon. Smiles and laughter are obligatory. While the story revolves around the upcoming wedding of a young woman (whose name, like the Abba tunes, I’ve forgotten) and her search for her father among three possibilities (Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, Colin Firth), the movie is really about getting those three actors together with Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski, and Julie Walters and letting them have a great time hamming it up with these songs. For the most part their gleeful abandon carries things along. The movie bogs down when it shifts to the younger generation, and also at one particularly weak musical number that Streep delivers with every ounce of her considerable energy and talent but whose choreography and lyrics make things grind to a puzzling halt. (That song is “The Winner Takes it All” in which it seems that Streep’s character is desparately trying to communicate something of great importance to Brosnan’s, but as she is obliged to sing this song, the message is hopelessly lost.) Nevertheless, there is a certain charm in seeing these six talented and mature actors hamming it up in a corny musical on a Greek island. Mamma Mia!

The Onion presciently called it back when Bush was appointed: “Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Over”. Now, their video channel has a fitting retrospective.

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Here’s a recent picture of spokes in Saturn’s rings. It’s the dark radial smudge in the bright B ring (and a couple of fainter ones).

Spokes in Saturn’s rings observed by the Cassini spacecraft.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

We know the particles making up the spokes are dust (micrometers in size) due to the way they scatter light (in the case of the picture above, they are not reflecting as much light as the larger meter-sized particles that make up the main rings). Small particles are easily pushed around by electric and magnetic fields, and this in some way probably explains the radial shape of the spokes. However, what triggers their formation is still unknown. We had hoped that the UV instrument on Cassini would be able to detect the flash of light produced when a meteoroid hit the rings (one theory for the mechanism that triggers spoke formation), but in a paper published earlier this year we showed that our non-detection is an unavoidable consequence of the nature of the expanding cloud of plasma produced in an impact. Spokes will get increasing scrutiny in the Cassini Equinox Mission (now underway) and hopefully in the proposed Cassini Solstice Mission. High resolution movies should help reveal the nature of these intriguing phenomena.

Hancock is a great concept with a superstar (Will Smith) at the helm in desperate need of a story. The concept is a superhero with a bad attitude. Drunk, and careless with his takeoffs and landings, Hancock manages to make people hate him even as he’s saving their lives. Enter Jason Bateman, an idealistic public relations professional (whose beautiful house seems a mismatch to his lack of professional traction) determined to help Hancock’s image with the public. There is a lot of good fun to be had here, with Smith’s ragged heroics and Bateman’s irrepressible likability. There’s something liberating about seeing a superhero (Hancock’s powers are Superman-like) talk a little trash and throw his muscle around a bit indiscriminately. But that’s just the framework for a movie, and it’s the plot where Hancock underachieves.

On the one hand, give the team credit for not plumping it up with a bunch of empty action. The movie comes in at a slim 92 minutes, which is more typical of an animated movie. On the other hand, I want my 2 hours and 10 minutes of Will Smith action-packed entertainment. The plot of this movie involves a back story that is explained in dialogue, leaving a gaping hole for some very cool (as I imagine them) flashback sequences. The movie it could have been would have been much better than the movie it is, which is entertaining enough (barely).

Even as a lifelong fan of Star Wars, cute robots never did much for me. R2-D2 is a nice supporting character, but I don’t know if he could carry a movie. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Pixar team, led by writer/director Andrew Stanton, managed to make a small boxy trash compactor as adorable as a lost puppy. Given their past success I probably shouldn’t be surprised at the appeal of Wall-E (the character and the movie). Set 800 years in the future, Wall-E is the last functioning waste-disposer left behind by humanity to clean up the mess on planet Earth. Those centuries of solitude have allowed Wall-E to develop a personality and a yearning for companionship. That appears to arrive in the form of a sleek egg-shaped robot, Eve, on a search for signs that Earth is habitable again. Soon Wall-E and Eve are on a star cruiser where people (also egg-shaped) laze around in flying chairs with liquid meals served to them and entertainment piped directly into their heads through video screens. Our heroes must overcome their own directives and the rest of the robots to wake people from their complacency.

There is an evil robot reminiscent of Hal and a couple of other nods to 2001: A Space Odyssey. The story is engaging, but it’s the charm of that little robot that carries the movie, made even more impressive by his lack of dialog. He has quite a collection of toys from his years of garbage collecting and compacting, but no one to show them to. Only an old videotape of The Music ManHello Dolly! with its intriguing images of humans interacting with each other. Wall-E’s presentation to Eve of his collection is perhaps his most appealing moment. Writing this review makes me want to see it again.

To say Wanted is over the top is to mistake the movie for something having anything to do with the top. My mother commented that the climactic chase scene in Get Smart was “over the top” which only indicated that she hasn’t been to any big-budget Hollywood action movies in the last 10 or 15 years. Wanted, on the other hand, is in the realm of cartoon-fantasy (it is based on a comic book series). It has elements of: The Matrix with superhumans shooting magical bullets wandering among the ordinary sheep (that’s you and me), every vengeful superhero movie ever made, and even a dash of style from Fight Club and adrenaline from Crank thrown in for seasoning.

James McAvoy plays the hero, Wesley Gibson, who all his life has mistaken the superhuman ability to shoot the wings off a fly and make bullets turn corners with a predilection for panic attacks. Enter Fox (Angelina Jolie) and Sloan (Morgan Freeman (my co-star if you’re playing 6 degrees of Josh Colwell)) of the ancient “Fraternity” to show him that he’s actually someone special and not an anonymous loser. The Fraternity is that one that was created 1000 years ago by weavers who have a magic loom that tells them who to assassinate. Yes, being special in this world means killing people whose names are spit out in code on a piece of cloth. Wanted has the same appeal as most movies in the genre of “guilty pleasures”: impressive action set-pieces, flying cars and flying people, and bad guys having bad things happen to them. There are some nice humorous touches at the beginning when Wesley is still entrenched in the world of sheep (the real world) and being dragged into the world of assassins. But that quickly fades into a steady action beat with the occasional admonition to the audience to seize the day.

I was elected to the DPS committee this week for a three-year term beginning at the next meeting of the DPS (Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society) in October at Cornell University. I pledge to do everything in my power to lower gas prices and bring the troops home from Iraq.