A little googling has shown me that a “Saturn Return” is
some kind of astrological term. I’m sure we don’t want that kind of thing on here. Just to reassure you, I’m not about to
get all Mystic Meg on you, I was actually referencing an REM song…
Seriously though, this week I’m focusing on Saturn, the
famous ringed planet. It’s just passed opposition so now is a great time to get
out there and see what is regarded to be one of the wonders of the solar
system. And hurry to see it while you can because from this year until the
early 2020’s, Saturn is going to be a difficult planet to see from Northern
latitudes as it skirts our horizon in the constellations of Scorpius and
Sagittarius…
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| Saturn, the Ringed Planet - Photo by NASA |
The ringed planet is the faintest of the naked eye planets,
getting close to magnitude 0 at best. That means that although its fainter than
the others (And it’s debatable whether Mercury could be classed as easier to
see) it’s still a pretty bright object. At the moment it’s lurking in Libra, so
miles from any other bright stars except for Spica, the brightest star in the
constellation of Virgo.
Naked Eye
Saturn is most prominent at about Midnight, fairly high and due south. It’s a yellowy star and brighter than anything
else around it, but otherwise not immediately interesting.
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| Image thanks to Stellarium |
Binoculars
Once you get Saturn in the binoculars you may be
disappointed to find that you can’t see the famous ring system. Even very large
binoculars will show the planet as an oval at best. You might be able to make
out a small orange dot close to Saturn though – this is Titan, its largest
moon, and one of the largest in the solar system. Its surface is permanently
shrouded in methane clouds that tint it orange, and beneath them lies an ocean
of liquid methane.
Telescope
With a telescope Saturn isn’t just interesting, it’s one of
the most beautiful objects in the solar system. Even a modest aperture will
show you the famous rings. For a long time people didn’t know what the rings
were – astronomers even speculated that they were solid objects. They did
observe that the rings change their orientation to us over time. At present
they’re angled towards us so we see their full extent – at this time with good
seeing and enough aperture you can make out the gap between the two main ring systems,
the Cassini Division. In about ten years’ time, as the planet wobbles on its
axis, the rings will be edge on, appearing as a long line, and for a while
they’ll be completely invisible. This is the best time to look for the other
moons; Dione, Tethys, Rhea and Enceladus, if your aperture is up to it. You can
see them now from time to time, but the rings will obscure them every so often.
Probably the other most bizarre moon of Saturn (And it has 53 named moons) is
Iapetus, which featured in Arthur C Clarke’s novelisation of 2001: A Space
Odyssey* – half of it is highly reflective while the other half is quite dark.
When the reflective side is turned towards us it’s easy to see, but at other
times it becomes quite hard.
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| Freaky Iapetus - Photo by NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
Aside from the impressive ring system, Saturn doesn’t show
much more. There is some banding, under clear skies, but mostly it’s the rings
that steal the show.
