Titan may have lakes on its surface. This Cassini radar image shows two lakes "kissing" each other on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. The image from a flyby on Sept. 23, 2006, covers an area about 60 kilometers (37 miles) wide by 40 kilometers (25 miles) high. The next Titan flyby is on October 9.
For more data, check out this web site.

Ozone and carbon monoxide pollution in Earth's atmosphere is being mapped from space, providing unique insights into the sources of these pollutants and how they are transported around the world. The observations of carbon monoxide and ozone were obtained from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer instrument onboard NASA's Aura satellite. The instrument, built and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., uses new methods to measure ozone and carbon monoxide in the troposphere -- the part of Earth's atmosphere between the surface and up to approximately 6.2 miles altitude. Images of both the instrument and a map of Ozone over the Atlantic ocean are provided at this link.

Career Success #5: manage your work so that it actually gets done. One of the keys to this is good targeting. When this is done well, everyone on your team knows what they need to accomplish, and how soon each part of the job must get done. When I learned the material in this booklet on targeting and goals, I found I could triple the productivity of teams that I was managing.

Ground-Piercing Radar on NASA Mars Orbiter is now Ready for Work
September 19, 2006: NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has extended the long-armed antenna of its radar, preparing the instrument to begin probing for underground layers of Mars. The orbiter's Shallow Subsurface Radar, provided by the Italian Space Agency, will search to depths of about one kilometer (six-tenths of a mile) to find and map layers of ice, rock and, if present, liquid water.

The Tom Cruise / Paramount controversy all makes sense now. I've met Cruise and found him to be a pretty decent fellow who respects others. His movies generated in excess of $3 billion in revenues for Paramount, and his last 2 movies generated a total of $1 billion revenue. It was hard to understand the business case for Paramount's actions, especially the public tone of those actions. It all made sense when I found out that 2 members of the board of directors at Viacom (the parent company to Paramount) are also members of the board of directors of major pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer and Wyeth. The blackbox warnings that are now required for certain drugs have had a negative impact on drug sales, and Tom is credited with helping bring this about. So it just looks like a case of payback, with Paramount caught in the middle. Details are provided here.
I should point out once again that all opinions presented here are my own and do not represent the opinion or policy of my employer.
Bob

Web-cast on Thursday, October 12: Advanced Technology for Life Detection and Biology, titled: Looking for Life in all the Strange Places, with all the right Tools , by the manager of JPL's Life Detection Science and Technology Program. Click here on Thursday at 7 p.m. PST for the webcast.

You have a much better chance of career success if you have a strong understanding of targets and target attainment. I tripled the productivity of an analysis team that I managed some years ago when I studied this reference.

Ethane clouds on Titan. Cassini will fly by Titan again on September 23. Right now, it is picking up infrared images of Titan's northern hemisphere which can be seen at this link. The images show the reflection of sunlight on Titan's atmosphere. The image appears in false color so that the highest reflection appears as a reddish hue. The vast ethane cloud can be seen in all images as a reddish band just north of 50 degrees latitude.

Career Success #4: plan your work so that it can get done. This is not ordinarily taught in engineering schools, and it is a big topic. I've taught over 1,000 engineers and scientists how to do this, but it takes a few hours to do it right. Here is just a quick sketch of the basics.
1. Organize the work by product. A good reference for this is here. [If you are looking for a shorter treatment on this, here is a more compact reference.] Be very thorough on this step. Don't forget enabling products as well as deliverables (e.g., you need to create the product "test equipment" in order to get the deliverable product "tested hardware")
2. Assign responsibility for product accomplishment to someone.
3. Have them work out a schedule for completing products. Work out the dependencies (you need to get a fishing rod before you catch a fish, etc.) and you integrate the schedule so that everything is done in a feasible sequence.
4. Finally work out what it costs to do each product, and add some margin so that you can survive the surprises that life will through at you.

Pluto and Beyond. Caltech planetary astronomy professor Mike Brown will discuss the discovery of 2003 UB313 (which could have become the 10th planet) in lectures Thursday, Sept. 14, in von Karman and Friday, Sept. 15, at Pasadena City College. Both lectures start at 7 p.m. Thursday's lecture will be webcast.

Here is where stars are born, literally. This links to an image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. It reveals the complex life cycle of young stars, from their dust-shrouded beginnings to their stellar debuts. It shows a nursery of stars 21,000 light-years away.

Career success #3: understand what is really needed and wanted to get ahead where you are working. There is something called the Expanded Non-Existence formula that broadly applies to this situation. If you do this step really well, you will be a leader. The full treatment on this topic and many other career related topics is provided here. A less expensive and more focussed discussion on this topic is provided at this other site.

Cassini's next encounter with Saturn's moon Titan will be on September 7. Cassini has been touring Saturn's rings and moons for two years now. Here is a link to some of the more interesting images.

Career success part 2: successfully get jobs that are being offered. This requires good communication lines to know what is being offered, and good personal communication skills so that you can present yourself as the right individual for the job. Job interviews can be stressful. I would have failed in my first successful interview if I had not taken a course in effective communications. I highly recommend this particular course to anyone.
Bob