Time: 10:00 PM
Brief
Saturn is a favorite planet of millions of people, even if it just means seeing it in a book or website. However, once a viewer looks through a telescope and sees the rings, (s)he is often taken aback, and can't believe that it is the "real deal". No stickers, folks! The way we see Saturn in the eyepiece may be far pale compared to those of the Voyager Mission pictures from decades ago, yet it still can attract at a mean distance of about 900 million miles away.
See Saturn close up, rising in the late-evening sky this week in image one, while the second image shows a zoom-in of about 1000x to show the rings and their divisions a little more clearly. The link to kick off this entry shows a much closer image on that webpage.
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| *click on images to enlarge: courtesy of Starry Night Pro Plus, version 6.4.3, by Simulation Curriculum Corp. |
Saturn's rings are made up of billions to trillions of icy particles, along with some dust and "other chemicals" (not specifically mentioned from the source I used). For size, the particles range from a spec of sand, to as big as a small house. All together, they orbit Saturn, although to us, they look as if to be solid rings. At the distance that we see Saturn mentioned earlier, it is of no surprise that at their size, there must be so many particles!
(H)ydrogen and (he)lium make up Saturn's outer atmosphere, at a ratio of 96/3; minus trace amounts of other gases including ammonia and methane, those two are most often talked about. If the H/HE mentions sound familiar, they are also the main gases that make up our Sun, although the proportion difference is much smaller.
Much like the bands that we see on Saturn's gas neighbor Jupiter, Saturn's are made up of cloud layers, although fainter. To learn more about the cloud characteristics, check out this helpful link:
http://lasp.colorado.edu/education/outerplanets/giantplanets_atmospheres.php
What is most impressive about the rings of Saturn now, is that how much of them we can see, being another reason for image two's high magnification. Since we are viewing Saturn straight towards its mid-northern latitudes as opposed to the equator, we see much more of the curve of the rings going around the disc. Just a few years ago, we were looking at Saturn towards its equator, meaning that we saw the rings "edge-on"; they were hardly visible at all for about 12-14 months, yet have improved since. The edge-on cycle happens twice per revolution for Saturn, which lasts about 29.5 Earth-years. The change of angle when viewing the planet, is a combination of Saturn's revolving and ours, with the orbits of both planets not being in the exact same plane. If they were even more off, we would be viewing Saturn's poles; such would give excellent ring views, yet only seeing one hemisphere at a time, for some years.
Saturn has 62 Moons with confirmed orbits as of the count about a year ago. That is, most are captured asteroids with perhaps a few not yet confirmed as a result of orbits with extreme inclinations. We only see 5 of them easily--sometimes 6, for if a bigger field is used than I show this time. Enjoy the view, as Saturn rises about four minutes earlier each evening. As Mars did earlier this month, Saturn reaches opposition in April, appearing a little brighter than it does now.
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