Saturn’s Rings
by adminOne thing even the most pedestrian of telescopes should be able to show you is the rings of Saturn. In fact, given that the rings should become visible at about 12-14x magnification a good selection of Astronomy binoculars should let you view the rings and light pollution barely effects viewing at least the shape of Saturn.
(Saturn as seen via Cassini Space Probe - Do NOT expect this level of imagery.
How well you see the rings is another matter. With low magnification or small sized telescopes Saturn and its rings will appear almost like a Hieroglyph of a human eye (Galileo said Saturn appeared to have ‘ears’). At higher powers and larger sized telescopes more details become apparent. An achievement of telescope observing is to get the to resolution were you are actually able to resolve the largest gap between rings known as the Cassini Division, which separates Saturn’s ‘A’ and ‘B’ rings. It is a tough target to resolve, and requires a decent telescope and patience. Even harder to resolve is the Encke Gap, which is only 325km wide. Even with large scale telescopes, the Encke gap may be invisible to human eye observation and may require long-exposure photography to ‘view’.
However, Saturn is going into a period where its rings may not be very visible at all. As of this writing (and in fact some weeks before it) Saturn’s Rings have turn to where they are effectively edge on towards us. This means that viewing the rings may be trick for some time to come, if not downright impossible. During the middle of 2009 the angle between Earth and the rings may provide a slight angle to give some viewing of the rings, but as the year progresses it will once again turn edge-on towards us.
For an excellent illustration of this, turn to Curt Renz’s diagrams of Saturn’s Ring throughout 2009.
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