Cailyn - Voyager

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Greetings Prog Archives:

My new album, Voyager, was recently added to Prog Archives and is now widely available on many sites.  These sites feature full length track streaming at hi-res:

At Bandcamp: https://cailynmusic.bandcamp.com/
At CD Baby: http://www.cdbaby.com/AlbumDetails.aspx?AlbumID=cailyn3
At my page under Audio: http://www.cailynmusic.com/
Available soon on Progstreaming

A short description of the album: Voyager is a musical portrait of the Voyager space missions - visions of the worlds visited by the Voyager probes, including music from The Planets suite by Gustav Holst, realized in powerful progressive rock arrangements.

This is a concept album and is intended to be listened to as a whole.  Reading the accompanying booklet is  highly recommended as these descriptions were instrumental in the composition and arrangement of the original Voyager tracks.  I have included the booklet text below.

Thank you for your consideration!

Cailyn Lloyd

Booklet

I fell in love with the Planets Suite by Gustav Holst as a child and had long imagined that music as great progressive rock as well.  Various artists have covered parts of the Planets; Mars in particular has received several impressive treatments.  For that reason, I was reluctant to cover Mars and felt that Mercury and Venus would be difficult to render as rock music.  Over time, the concept evolved from a progressive rock version of the Planets Suite to a musical portrait of the Voyager missions driven by my lifelong fascination with astronomy and the American space program.  

I imagined a series of tone poems–musical reflections of some of the worlds that the Voyager probes visited.  The Planets Suite provided the music for the four outer planets of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.  The remaining music is my vision of the many moons the Voyager probes photographed.  Although Holst composed The Planets as astrological concepts rather than astronomical concepts, his music nevertheless seems to capture wistful impressions of the planets especially as progressive rock arrangements. 

The musical portraits:

VOYAGER (Lloyd)

The Voyager program is a scientific endeavor that sent two unmanned probes into space to explore the outer planets.  Taking advantage of a favorable alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, the Voyagers were sent on a grand tour of the outer solar system.

The Voyager I probe was launched in September 1977 and the primary mission ended after encounters with the Jupiter system in 1979 and the Saturn system in 1980.  In August of 2012, Voyager I became the first human-made object to enter the previously unexplored regions of interstellar space and now–at a distance of almost 12 billion miles–is the farthest human-made object from Earth.  Voyager II was launched in August 1977 and the primary mission ended after encounters with the Jupiter system in 1979, the Saturn system in 1981, the Uranus system in 1986, and the Neptune system in 1989.  It remains the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune.  

Today, Voyager I and Voyager II continue forward in extended mission, tasked with locating and studying the boundaries of the solar system, including the Kuiper belt, the heliosphere, and interstellar space.

IO (Lloyd)

Io is the innermost of the four Galilean moons of the planet Jupiter and is the fourth-largest moon in the solar system.  It was named after the mythological character Io, a priestess of Hera who became one of Zeus's lovers.

With over 400 active volcanoes, Io is the most geologically active body in the solar system.  This extreme geologic activity results from tidal heating generated by friction inside Io as it is pulled between Jupiter and the other Galilean satellites, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.  Volcanoes belch plumes of sulfur compounds that climb as high as 300 miles and color the extensive plains on the surface red, white, black, and green–a coating of sulfur compounds and sulfur dioxide frost. The moon is also dotted with mountains–some taller than Mount Everest. 

EUROPA (Lloyd)

Europa was a Phoenician princess abducted by Zeus, who had assumed the form of a white bull.  Slightly smaller than our moon, Europa is the one of the original four Jovian moons sighted by Galileo in 1610.  

The surface is composed of water ice and is one of the smoothest in the solar system.  Complex and beautiful patterns adorn the icy surface–striations, cracks, and streaks, whereas craters are relatively rare.  The images of Europa's surface strongly resemble images of sea ice on Earth.  It is thought that beneath Europa's surface ice there is an ocean of liquid water, perhaps as much as 50 km deep, kept liquid by tidally generated heat.  Having a global ocean of water in contact with a rocky sea floor makes Europa one of the best places in the solar system to look for life beyond Earth (along with Enceladus).    

JUPITER (Holst)    

In Roman mythology, Jupiter was the king of the gods and the god of sky and thunder, an appropriate name for the largest planet in the solar system.  Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.  The planet was known to astronomers of ancient times and was associated with the mythology and religious beliefs of many cultures.  

Jupiter is more like the sun than a planet and is composed mostly of hydrogen and helium.  It may also have a rocky core of heavier elements, but like the other outer planets, Jupiter lacks a well-defined surface. The outer atmosphere is visibly divided into bands at different latitudes, resulting in turbulence and vivid storms along the interacting boundaries.  A prominent storm, the Great Red Spot, is known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope.  There are also at least 67 moons and a faint system of rings.

TITAN (Lloyd)

Titan is the largest moon of Saturn.  In Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of powerful deities who ruled during the legendary Golden Age.  It is the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere and the only object other than Earth for which evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found. The climate on Titan—including wind and rain—creates surface features similar to those found on Earth(,) such as dunes, rivers, lakes, and seas (probably of liquid methane and ethane), and is dominated by seasonal weather patterns as on Earth.

Titan is larger than the Moon and is composed primarily of water ice and rocky material.  The geologically young surface is generally smooth, with few known impact craters, although mountains and several possible cryovolcanoes have been found.  A cryovolcano–also known as an ice volcano–is a volcano that erupts volatiles such as water, ammonia or methane, instead of molten rock.  Collectively referred to as cryomagma or ice-volcanic melt, these substances are usually plumes of liquids, but also occur in vapor form.

SATURN (Holst)

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the solar system.   Named after the Roman god of agriculture, Saturn is also the root of the English word for Saturday (Saturn’s Day).  Saturn has a prominent and beautiful ring system that consists of nine continuous main rings and three discontinuous arcs, composed of mostly ice particles along with some rocky debris and dust.  The rings are extraordinarily thin: even though they rise more than 60,000 miles above the equator of the planet, they are less than a half mile thick.

While the rings of Saturn are very dramatic, the clouds of Saturn are much less colorful than those of Jupiter.  The planet appears pale yellow due to sulfur and ammonia crystals in the upper atmosphere.  Despite the bland appearance,  long-lived storms do appear and winds on Saturn can reach 1,100 mph–faster than on Jupiter–but not as fast as those on Neptune.

ENCELADUS (Lloyd)

In Greek mythology, Enceladus was one of the Gigantes, the enormous children of Gaia (the Earth).  Enceladus is the sixth-largest of the moons of Saturn and was discovered in 1789.  Until the two Voyager spacecraft passed near it, little was known about this small moon besides the identification of water ice on its surface.  Although the diameter of Enceladus is a mere 310 miles, it has a wide range of terrains ranging from old, heavily cratered surfaces to young, tectonically deformed terrain.

Like Europa, Enceladus appears to have liquid water under its icy surface.  Cryovolcanoes at the south pole shoot large jets of water vapor, other volatiles, and some solid particles into space.  Some of this water falls back onto the moon as snow, some of it is drawn to Saturn's rings, and some of it reaches Saturn.  Analysis of the jets suggests that they originate from a subsurface body of water, which, along with the unique chemistry found in the plume, has marked Enceladus as one of the best places to look for extraterrestrial life in the solar system.

MIRANDA (Lloyd)

Miranda was the daughter of Prospero in The Tempest by Shakespeare.  It is the innermost and the smallest of the larger Uranian moons (diameter 294 miles), and is one of the most interesting bodies in the solar system.  The surface is a patchwork of broken terrain criss-crossed by huge canyons as deep as 12 miles, indicating intense geological activity in the past.  Other features may be due to cryovolcanic eruptions of icy magma.  Like Frankenstein's monster, Miranda appears to have been pieced together from parts that didn't quite mesh properly.  

One theory suggests that Miranda was shattered by a massive impact and then reassembled, burying parts of the original surface and exposing parts of the interior.  A more mundane theory suggests the upwelling of partially melted ices are responsible for the strange landscapes on Miranda. 

URANUS  (Holst)

Uranus is named after a figure in Greek mythology, Ouranos, the god of the sky.  Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and the third-largest planet in the solar system.  It has a ring system and numerous moons. The Uranian system is unique among the planets in that it is tilted sideways so the north and south poles lie at the equatorial plane of other planets.  For this reason, the moons rotate around the planet perpendicular to the plane of the solar system. 

Uranus is similar in composition to Neptune, and both are different from the larger gas giants Jupiter and Saturn.  For this reason, astronomers sometimes refer to them as ice giants because they contain more ices such as water, ammonia, and methane, along with traces of hydrocarbons.  It has the coldest planetary atmosphere in the solar system with a minimum temperature of -370°F.  In images from Voyager II, Uranus appeared as a virtually featureless planet in visible light without the cloud bands or storms associated with the other giants. 

ARIEL (Lloyd)

Ariel is named after a sky spirit in Shakespeare's The Tempest.  The moon is relatively free of large impact craters and has a complex surface consisting of cratered terrain, smooth plains, and terrain cross-cut by scarps, ridges, and interconnected canyons, some which are hundreds of miles long and more than seven miles deep.  There is also evidence of volcanism and cryolava flows.  

Ariel is the fourth largest of the 27 known moons of Uranus and much of the detailed knowledge of Ariel derives from a single flyby of Uranus by Voyager II, which photographed about a third of the moon's surface.

TRITON (Lloyd)

Triton is the largest moon of the planet Neptune and the only large moon in the solar system that orbits in the opposite direction to the rotation of the home planet.  It is thought that Triton was captured by Neptune from the Kuiper belt.  (The Kuiper belt is a region of the solar system beyond the planets, extending outward beyond the orbit of Neptune.  It consists mainly of small bodies including the dwarf planet Pluto)

Triton is one of the few moons in the solar system known to be geologically active.  The surface is cut by complex valleys and ridges, probably the result of tectonics and icy volcanism.  Although Triton is made of various ices, the subsurface processes are similar to those that produce volcanoes and rift valleys on Earth, but with water and ammonia lavas as opposed to liquid rock.  Parts of the surface are dotted with geysers–Voyager II observed geyser-like eruptions of invisible nitrogen gas and entrained dust from beneath the surface of Triton in plumes up to 5 miles high. 

NEPTUNE (Holst)    

Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun and is named after the Roman god of the sea.  Neptune is also considered an ice giant(y) similar in composition to Uranus.  Neptune's atmosphere is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, along with traces of hydrocarbons and possibly nitrogen, and contains a higher proportion of ices such as water, ammonia, and methane.  Traces of methane in the (outermost regions in part) outer atmosphere account for the planet's stunning blue appearance.

The atmosphere of Neptune is notable for its active and visible weather patterns. At the time of the Voyager II flyby, a Great Dark Spot ? was visible in the southern hemisphere comparable to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. These weather patterns are driven by the strongest sustained winds of any planet in the solar system, with wind speeds as high as 1,300 mph.  Neptune has a faint and fragmented ring system which was confirmed by Voyager II.

PALE BLUE DOT (Lloyd)

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by Voyager I  from a distance of about 3.7 billion miles.  At the urging of Dr Carl Sagan, Ground Control issued a command that directed the distant space craft to turn around and, looking back, to take photos of each of the planets it had visited.  From Voyager's vast distance, the Earth was captured as a infinitesimal point of light, actually smaller than a single pixel of the photo.  The image was taken with a narrow angle camera lens, with the Sun quite close to the field of view.  Quite by accident, the Earth was captured in one of the scattered light rays caused by taking the image at an angle so close to the Sun.  Dr. Sagan later said of this photo:

"We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot.  That's here.  That's home.  That's us.  On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives.  The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.  

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.  Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.  Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot.  How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.  Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light...to me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." 

HELIOPAUSE (Lloyd)

The heliopause is the boundary between the solar wind and the interstellar medium. The solar wind creates a bubble known as the heliosphere within the interstellar medium and the outer edge of this bubble is where the solar wind is no longer strong enough to push back the interstellar medium. This is known as the heliopause, and is often considered to be the outer border of the solar system.  Voyager I crossed the heliopause as of August 2012, entering interstellar space.  At Voyager’s distance today, the sun appears as no more than a point source of light, such as the stars in the night sky appear to us.  It is still a very bright point source of light, roughly 40 times as bright as the full moon appears to us.

* * *

In 1950, our knowledge of the solar system was extraordinarily limited.  The four big moons of Jupiter, discovered by Galileo in 1610, remained mere dots of light circling the giant planet. They were assumed to be dead worlds much like our moon which is roughly the same size.  Voyager I and II transformed our understanding of the Jupiter system.  They discovered the planetary rings, whose existence was quite unexpected.  Subsequently, Voyager II would discover the faint rings around both Uranus and Neptune.  Rings, in other words, are attributes of all the gas-giant planets.  The rings of Saturn are simply the most spectacular.

The biggest surprises were found on the many moons along the way.  Far from resembling Earth’s moon, each of the Galilean moons are unique.  Europa, the smallest, is covered with a thick crust of ice that might have a life-bearing sea beneath.  Io, greatly affected by Jupiter’s immense gravity, is littered with active volcanoes, the first ever observed beyond Earth.

Beyond Jupiter, Titan shrouded in clouds, was later discovered to be a bizarre landscape of hydrocarbon rains, lakes, and rivers.  Enceladus, another watery world, may also harbor life.  Miranda is an enigma, Triton strange world of nitrogen geysers and ice volcanoes.  None of this was known before Voyager, a mission that was originally designated to operate for just five years and yet, continues to inform us to this day.