Saturn

BARBARA 
 Nothing can be worse than this... 


 She flings open the door and steps outside.  She
        promptly disappears. 


 ADAM 
 Barbara! 

 EXT. SURFACE OF SATURN'S MOON TITAN - DAY 

 Barbara plunges into the dusty surface of Titan with an
        enormous Saturn looming in the sky.  She looks around
        with wonder and some fear. 

 A SULFUR VOLCANO

        erupts in the distance. 

 A meteor CRASHES with a lurid
        EXPLOSION.  As from a great distance she hears Adam's
        VOICE.  Like THUNDER. 

ADAM 
 Barbara! 


 She turns slowly in the yellow dense sand that covers
        the surface of this distant moon. 

        

BARBARA'S POV 
 Adam is trudging towards her.  Behind him, hovering
        isolated in the air, is the kitchen door. 

        

BACK TO SCENE 
 Adam at last catches up with her.  Surveys around them. 
                                

BARBARA 
 Oh Adam. 
Find somebody. 
 I'm
                  getting all yellow. 
Do something! 

        

BEHIND THEM

        Something is burrowing rapidly toward them through the
        sand.  The Something could be right out of "Dune". 

BARBARA AND ADAM

        stare for a moment, then Adam grabs her and pulls her
        toward the kitchen door.  But the kitchen door has
        moved, so they veer in the new direction.

        The Something follows them and rises out of the sand. 

 ON SOMETHING

        It is a very big, very nasty, and very hungry SNAPPING
        SANDWORM.  It ROARS and lunges at them. 

 BARBARA

        slightly angered at it, instinctively bats at it.


        THE SANDWORM

        is momentarily stunned at Barbara's audacity.  It
        freezes and shakes its loathesome head.


        BARBARA

        bats at it again.  Adam is wide-eyed, tries to pull her
        away.  The Sandworm recovers and ROARS after them.


        ADAM

        grabs Barbara and tries to escape, but they slip and
        sink in the sand.

        They make it to the door just in time, swing it open
        and hurl themselves through.  The door shuts with a
        BANG just in front of the ROARING SANDWORM. 


 THE SANDWORM

        rears and ROARS in frustration, HOWLING to the ringed
        planet. 

 INT. KITCHEN

        Barbara, weeping, throws herself in Adam's arms. 

BETELGEUSE : 

Hey you've been on Saturn!
                         (brushing yellow dust
                          off her) 

 I hate those Sandworms!  Yecchhh! 

 I've lost a lot of buddies to
                  Sandworms.
                         (back to work) 

 So a daughter?  She got good legs?
                  God I love a young leg. 

Explanation: 

What drives auroras on Saturn? To help find out, scientists have sorted through hundreds of infrared images of Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft for other purposes, trying to find enough aurora images to correlate changes and make movies. Once made, some movies clearly show that Saturnian auroras can change not only with the angle of the Sun, but also as the planet rotates. Furthermore, some auroral changes appear related to waves in Saturn's magnetosphere likely caused by Saturn's moons. Pictured above, a false-colored image taken in 2007 shows Saturn in three bands of infrared light. The rings reflect relatively blue sunlight, while the planet itself glows in comparatively low energy red. A band of southern aurora in visible in green. Inspection of many more Saturnian images may well lead to an even better understanding of both Saturn's and Earth's auroras.

Original Caption Released with Image: 

This synthetic aperture radar image was obtained by the Cassini spacecraft on its pass by Titan's south pole on Dec. 20, 2007. This image is centered near 76.5 south, 32.5 west and covers an area of 620 kilometers by 270 kilometers (385 miles by 170 miles).

Abundant evidence for flowing liquids is seen in this image, from sinuous, wide river channels to shorter, more chaotic drainage patterns. The extremely dissected, rugged terrain in the southern portion of the image has been very eroded by flowing liquids, probably from a combination of methane rainstorms and sapping (subsurface methane rising to erode the surface). The broad valleys seen in the southern portion of the image are particularly intriguing, as they appear to be flat-floored, filled with smooth material, and in places have sharply defined, relatively straight sides. Valleys such as this can be formed by tectonic processes, such as rifting, or by erosional processes, caused by flowing liquid or ice.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries. 

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.

Image Credit: 

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI

Image Addition Date: 

2008-01-08