To clearly see the rings of Saturn, you will need a telescope. And if the atmosphere is not steady, the image tends to ripple and blur the delicate details in the clouds and the rings, so it’s never as clear as you see in professional images taken with big scopes.īinoculars of 10-12x will show Saturn as a tiny, slightly non-circular disk, and they show Titan as a tiny point. The visual image of the planet in a telescope is often small. Saturn delights most stargazers, but it can be frustrating to observe, especially this year when the planet is low on the horizon for northern observers. Miller through Flickr) Saturn Observing Tips Saturn and Titan in 2009 (credit: Derek K. To sort them out, try this online tool at Sky and Telescope. With a telescope of 4-inch aperture, and dark sky, you can also find the moons Iapetus, Rhea, Dione, and Tethys, all of which are approximately magnitude 10-11. Which is too bad, because lakes of liquid hydrocarbons are spread across the rugged terrain of this planet-like world. The clouds hide the entire surface of Titan. A 6-inch or larger scope may show the color of the dense yellow-orange clouds on this large 8 th-magnitude moon, the second largest in the solar system. The brightest is Titan, a moon which you can see with binoculars. A yellow filter may help bring them out a little. The pale whitish-yellow bands on Saturn are by no means as obvious as Jupiter’s, but they are visible through most scopes. But the planet is twice as far from the Sun as Jupiter so it doesn’t receive enough energy to drive as much active weather. Like Jupiter, Saturn has a complex system of cloud bands visible with a small scope. The architecture of Saturn’s rings and cloud bands (image credit: Robert English). This is a consequence of the Seeliger effect, the temporary disappearance from our point of view of the shadows of the tiny ice particles that make up the rings. The apparent tilt of the rings this year is about 22 o, and you may be able to trace the outer rings all the way around the planet, even the far side.Īlso in the days around opposition, you may see the rings shine a little brighter than in the weeks before and after opposition. More than most planets, Saturn displays a striking 3-D effect caused by the darkened edges of the disk and, when you can see them before and after opposition, the shadows cast by the rings on the planet. If you have rock-steady sky and a 12-inch or larger scope, look for the elusive Encke division, another gap near the outer edge of the A-ring. This is the Cassini division.Ĭan you discern the difference in brightness between the two rings? Most observers agree the outer ‘A’ ring is fainter than the inner ‘B’ ring. You’ll easily see the two main A and B rings, and in steady skies at 100x or more, you may see the large gap between the two main rings. There are the rings, of course, with their complex structure and segmentation. Saturn is one of the finest sights in a small telescope, even for beginners, and the planet reveals much to a patient observer. The planet stays in this constellation through the end of the year, slower growing fainter and more distant. Saturn late August 2023 lies opposite the Sun in the constellation Aquarius. The planet’s disk spans about 19″ (less than half the size of Jupiter) and its rings are about 44″ from tip to tip. At opposition this year, Saturn lies about 1.32 billion kilometers from Earth. ![]() At opposition, Saturn shines at magnitude +0.4. It resumes its eastward (prograde) motion on November 4. ![]() The planet has been retrograding westward against the background stars a little each day since June 18. Like last year, Saturn reaches opposition south of the ecliptic this year in the constellation Aquarius (see below). Here’s how to find it and see it in a small telescope. The planet reaches opposition on Augand will remain bright and large in a telescope over the next few months. It is arguably the finest sight accessible with a small telescope. And incredibly beautiful… the color, the proportions, the apparent 3D perspective of this grand icy world. More than a few have looked through my small refractor on a night of good seeing and asked of Saturn, “Is it real?” Many casual observers get hooked on amateur astronomy after a first look at Saturn through a telescope. This composite image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 6 June 2018, shows the ringed planet Saturn with six of its 62 known moons.
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