A Saturnian Musical Celebration to Honor Paul McCartney

On the occasion of Paul McCartney’s landmark 64th birthday, the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) is releasing today an 8-minute movie as a birthday gift to the former Beatle. Sixty-four of the most dramatic and spectacular images taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, including one mosaic from the European-built Huygens probe of the surface of Titan, are composed together in a cinematic voyage through the Saturn system and put to the music of the Beatles.

“In their creation of new musical forms and directions, and in their expansive vision of the art of popular music, the Beatles reached heights of achievement in their brief time together that nobody has been able to surpass”, said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader and the producer/director of the movie. “And being a major element in that incredible story makes Paul McCartney, in my mind, one of planet Earth’s brightest stars. It makes me very happy to be able to celebrate him in this way. I hope he likes our movie.”

The movie `Sixty-four Sights from Saturn’ is available today on the home page of http://ciclops.org. High resolution versions may be obtained by emailing cpcomments@ciclops.org.

The Cassini imaging operations center (CICLOPS) is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.