The processed photopolarimeter data showed each ring was made up of numerous smaller ringlets. One of the finest mission moments for Hord was analyzing the data returned from the photopolarimeter when it was locked on the star Delta Scorpii as it emerged from behind Saturn and passed behind the elegant rings in a “stellar occultation” when the light from a star is blocked by an intervening object.
The CU-Boulder instrument also was used to learn more about the make-up of the Io torus, a doughnut-shaped ring around Jupiter formed by volcanic eruptions from it’s moon, Io, as well as determining the distribution of ring material orbiting Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and the surface compositions of the outer planet moons. And it helped scientists determine the structure Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, which Hord called “a giant hurricane that has blown for 200 hundred years,” as well the properties of the clouds and atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn Uranus and Neptune, and Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The instrument helped scientists distinguish between rock, dust, frost, ice and meteor material. The LASP photopolarimeter, a small telescope that measured the intensity and polarization of light at different wavelengths, was used for a variety of observations during the mission. ‘To finally look at them up close was the most remarkable thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” Since the early Voyager days were pre-Internet, “We used to send people over to the JPL news room to steal press kits so we could look at the pictures taken by the imaging team,” he laughs. “All of the scientists were dazzled by the pictures of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn coming back,” recalled Hord, 74, who still lives in Boulder. Hord, the principal investigator for a time on the LASP instrument known as a photopolarimeter built for Voyager, still shakes his head in wonder as he recalls some of the discoveries. The discoveries by Voyager started piling up: Twenty-three new planetary moons at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune active volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon, Io Jupiter’s ring system organic smog shrouding Saturn’s moon, Titan the braided, intertwined structure of Saturn’s rings the solar system’s fastest winds (on Neptune, about 1,200 miles per hour) and nitrogen geysers spewing from Neptune’s moon, Triton.Ĭharlie Hord, a former planetary scientist at CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, remembers the salad days of the Voyager program, which was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. University of Colorado Boulder scientists, who designed and built identical instruments for Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, were as stunned as anyone when the spacecraft began sending back data to Earth. Voyager 2 is not far behind, but on a different trajectory. Now NASA has announced that Voyager 1 - about 11 billion miles from Earth - has now sailed to the edge of the solar system and is expected to punch its way into interstellar space in the coming months or years. Voyager 2 went on to visit Uranus and Neptune, completing the “Grand Tour of the Solar System,” perhaps the most exciting interplanetary mission ever flown. The identical spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, were launched in the summer and programmed to pass by Jupiter and Saturn on different paths. In 1977, Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president, Elvis died, Virginia park ranger Roy Sullivan was hit by lightning a record seventh time, and two NASA space probes destined to turn planetary science on its head launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
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