End of an Era, in More Ways Than One

Last Friday, September 15, was the last day for two things: my employment with ASIAA, and the Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn.

Cassini was launched in 1997, when I was eight years old and firmly in the grip of my first passionate love of astronomy, focused on the planets in the solar system. It took seven years to reach Saturn so I had plenty of time to find out about it and years to look forward to its arrival at my favorite planet in the far-off future of 2004. When Cassini finally reached Saturn I remember reading all about it, about the Huygens' probe's successful landing on Titan, the first such landing on a solid body in the outer solar system, and the incredible pictures being beamed back from Saturnian orbit. And over the past thirteen years I've watched as any number of amazing discoveries were made and awesome photos taken.

Saturn from Cassini in 2016; photo by NASA (public domain).

Cassini was originally slated for a four-year mission, from 2004 to 2008, but its outstanding success allowed it a mission extension first to 2010, then an additional seven years beyond that. I was fifteen when it got to Saturn, and it came to feel like a a constant: multiple rovers landed on Mars, Messenger flew by Mercury a few times, New Horizons sped past Pluto, several other missions blazed brightly briefly in the public consciousness like shooting stars but the whole time Cassini was there, quietly taking pictures and measurements and redefining our knowledge of Saturn and its gorgeous system of rings and moons, constant like the cosmic microwave background.

This video gives a brief overview of the mission.

To me, having grown up with Cassini it's strange to think that it's finally gone; no more news stories with the latest eye-catching pictures, or amazing discoveries it made (although I don't think we've exhausted the scientific value of the data it sent back yet, not by a long shot). I didn't keep particularly close tabs on it as the years went by (partly due to that perception of permanance)—and only found out about the end of the mission a few days ago in fact—but I generally kept up with the major discoveries, and all in all I'm going to miss that intrepid probe.

But fuel, and NASA's budget allowance, eventually come to an end, and so too did Cassini's incredible mission. And coincidentally it happened on my last day of work with ASIAA, where I've been a telescope operator for AMiBA for the past six months (exactly!). It feels like the end of an era, in more ways than one, as I'm now busy preparing to move to Australia to start graduate school in just over a week.

My final picture of the YTLA, taken a day before on the 14th. 

People keep asking me if I'm excited, or telling me how excited I must be. Being free of work has left me free to face the reality of moving and all the many things still remaining to be done in the next far-too-few days. My internal emotional state seems to be a quantum superposition of many confusing and conflicting feelings, and observing it usually yields a value best approximated by “abject terror,” so I try not to do that too often.

For some reason people seem to ascribe to me a confidence and adventurousness I can only dream of possessing in reality. The truth is I am a man who finds blessed comfort in routines and the thought of breaking all of them—simultaneously—terrifying in the extreme. I find travel (especially alone) highly stressful, necessitating as it does the disruption of so many comforting patterns, though at least for the past eight years it's only been between my current and my childhood homes; now I face the looming specter of leaving everything I know behind to travel somewhere I know no one. Perhaps some people would find that exciting? All I know is that it doesn't feel like excitement to me.

Sorry, that got a bit philosophical towards the end didn't it? It's not all so doom-and-gloom as this probably makes it sound. I should get back to preparations—I've got a lot to do before next Wednesday! A hui hou!