Exploring Saturn

When I began my research for Exploring Saturn, one question kept nagging me: How do we know all this stuff? Many books will tell you how far away Saturn is, how much it weighs, what gases are in its atmosphere, even what its core is made of. But none of them explain how we figured these things out. How do you weigh a planet? How can you tell what's inside it? In this book, I explain not only what we know about Saturn, but how we learned it -- how scientists from Aristotle to the guys at NASA have built on the work of those who came before them. Spacecraft certainly helped, of course, and when the Cassini orbiter arrives at Saturn in July 2004, we'll have an opportunity to learn a lot more about the planet, its moons, and its rings. But you may be surprised to read how much scientists figured out before the Space Age -- and in some cases before telescopes. Kind of makes me wish I paid more attention in math class.Bortolotti, Dan is the author of 'Exploring Saturn' with ISBN 9781552977651 and ISBN 155297765X.