The ice particles can range in size from crystals to the size of your house. The rings are made up of billions and billions of ice particles, with some rock mixed in. Amazingly, the ring system is only around 50 feet thick in spots. Its hallmark, though, is its incredible, intricate ring system that spans a diameter over 175,000 miles, more than half of the distance between Earth and its moon. Like all of the planets in the outer solar system, Saturn is basically a ball of hydrogen and helium gas about 75,000 miles in diameter. So make a late-night viewing party for Saturn, even around midnight. You’ll get a much better view of anything you’re observing higher in the heavens. That will definitely muddy up the image, and you’ll probably be a little disappointed. Whenever you observe any celestial object low in the sky, you have to look through more of Earth’s blurring atmospheric shell. If you can, hang in there and stay up as late as you can to view Saturn through a telescope, because it’ll be higher in the sky. I never get tired of hearing reactions like “sweet,” “awesome,” “incredible,” “holy _,” and much more! If you’ve never seen Saturn through a telescope, now is the time. That was a real thrill for me way back when, and now I’m blessed to own much larger telescopes so Saturn is really over the top! Even more fun for me is being able to show Saturn off to the hundreds of folks at my astronomy programs over the years, especially the kids. Wenzel Franzich changed my life that night in a fabulous way viewing Saturn through his scope! Even through a small telescope you can see Saturn’s ring system. I’ll never forget seeing Saturn through a telescope for the first time in 1969 at the Woodlake Nature Center in Richfield. Jupiter is cool, but without a doubt, Saturn is my favorite planetary telescope target! It’s been that way since I was a kid. This week in Starwatch, however, I want to concentrate on Saturn. Jupiter is the brighter of the two and is also at its closest approach to Earth for 2021. Just look for the two brightest “stars” you can see in the low southeastern sky. As a bonus, Jupiter is also close by in the heavens this year, just below and to the left of Saturn. It’s also a little better placed in the early evening sky for serious observing. Another great thing about viewing Saturn at opposition is that it’s available all night long, rising at sunset and setting at sunrise just like a full moon.Įven though Saturn is about 7 million miles farther away this week, it’s still available pretty much all night long. It takes the Earth about two more weeks to once again come between Saturn and the sun. That’s because in the year it takes our Earth to orbit the sun, Saturn only moves about 1/29th of its orbital distance around the sun. It takes just over a year for this alignment to happen. In second place, in my opinion, is Saturn, which reached its closest approach to Earth earlier this year, a little over 830 million miles away. In the meantime, it’s hard to imagine a world much more beautiful than our Earth. We certainly haven’t seen any of these planets directly with much detail because of the vast distances of space, but that day may come. There are also thousands of possible planets discovered that haven’t been officially confirmed yet. That’s just in the immediate vicinity of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. ![]() Since 1989, thousands of extrasolar planets have been discovered orbiting other stars.
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