<<  -- 6 --  Kelly Ferjutz    MUSIC IN THE SPACING OF THE SPHERES

URANUS is the magician, who may be a bit of a klutz, but a genial one. Uranus rotates about an axis tilted by 98 degrees from the plane of its orbit around the sun, presumably due to an earlier collision with some massive body, and leading to seasons that last over 20 years. Over a period of six years Voyager 2 covered more distance than that between the sun and Saturn to reach a planet that looks like a featureless greenish-blue ball suspended in a cold void.

And finally --

NEPTUNE is the mystic, introduced by the flute of Joshua Smith, and ending with the eerie, fading-away women's voices of the Oberlin College Choir, prepared by Hugh Floyd, director of choral activities at Oberlin. Neptune is 2.8 billion miles from the sun; a beautiful sapphire-blue planet suspended in space. Out here, the sun is a mere speck in the sky, so that the surface temperature of the planet is minus 360 degrees Farenheit, colder than even Cleveland in the wintertime. This is the outermost planet which orbits the sun once every 165 years, and is named for the Roman god of our deep blue sea ... its blue methane atmosphere has the strongest winds of any planet in the solar system, sweeping the planet at more than a thousand miles per hour.

It was a marvelous combined effort: the broad and majestic musical interpretation of Michael Stern, the luscious sounds of the Cleveland Orchestra, the witty, perceptive and informative narration of Lawrence Krauss and the previously unimaginable and fascinating photographs shown overhead. The still photos of the planets which accompany this article are all supplied courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech, from the NASA Planetary Photojournal website.