Watching the full moon rise over the east-northeast horizon on Friday evening, you will probably notice a rather bright yellowish-white “star” shining sedately just above and to the moon’s right. That object is not a star, however, but the planet Saturn.

Currently, Saturn is at its best for 2007. It can be found to the west (right) of the famous “Sickle” of Leo — a backward question mark-shaped star pattern, which contains Leo’s brightest star, Regulus, at the Sickle’s base. (Check out this sky map).

On Feb. 10, Saturn will be at opposition to the sun, meaning it will be rising at sunset, reaches its highest point in the southern sky at midnight then drops down below the west-northwest horizon at sunrise. In other words, it’s now available for viewing all night long.

Saturn is the telescopic showpiece of the night sky, thanks to its great ring system in all of their icy, glimmering elegance. In small telescopes, they surprise even veteran observers with their chilling beauty even though it is expected. Certainly they will delight anyone who received a telescope as a holiday gift this winter. Any telescope magnifying more than 30-power will show them.

Galileo’s changing view
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was the first to view the rings in 1610, although what he saw through his crude telescope left him completely baffled; his crude, imperfect “optick tube” revealed Saturn as having an odd pair of appendages or companion bodies on either side. He couldn’t make them out clearly and thought that Saturn was a triple body, two small orbs on either side of a large one.

Galileo announced this discovery in 1610 with an anagram written in Latin. The jumbled letters could be transposed to read: Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi (“I have observed the highest planet to be triple.”) Later, when the rings turned edgewise to Earth and the two companions disappeared, Galileo invoked an ancient myth when he wrote, “Has Saturn swallowed his children?” Galileo lamented that his mind was too weak to comprehend this strange phenomenon.

Actually, it was his telescope that was too weak; a better telescope would have revealed Saturn’s companions as rings. It wasn’t until nearly a half-century later that telescope lenses improved to the point where the ringlike nature of these “appendages” became apparent. On March 25, 1655, a young Dutch mathematician, Christian Huygens (1629-1695) utilized a much better telescope and saw the rings for what they really were.

Today, we know they are composed of a myriad of small solid particles and are likely the icy fragments of a satellite that probably ventured too close to Saturn and was torn apart by tidal forces.

Slow orbit
The ancients regarded Saturn as the “highest” planet, occupying the outermost or highest sphere before that of the fixed stars. Since Saturn requires 29.5 years to orbit the sun, its progress through the zodiacal constellations is quite slow, averaging about 2.5 years per constellation. The last time this planet was located in Leo was in 1979.

In mythology, Saturn closely resembled the Greek god Cronus, but he’s more usually recognized as the Roman god of agriculture. The name is related to both the noun satus (seed corn) and the verb serere (to sow).

But why would the planet Saturn be linked to agriculture? Perhaps a clue can be found from the ancient Assyrians who referred to Saturn as lubadsagush — which, translated, meant “oldest of the old sheep.” Possibly this name was applied because Saturn seems to move so very slowly among the stars; it may have also reminded sky watchers of the slow gait of plowing oxen or cattle.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.

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anyone look? i had my telescope out didnt see it in much detail but it was still pretty neat

Awwwww.. I missed it. Will it be around the same position tonight? I hope it's not cloudy.

I wanted to look, but it was just too darn overcast/snowy in my location...plus it's really cold outside! (I'm far more of a warm weather astronomer).

I didn't want to brave the 2 degree weather...I've seen Saturn many times. The sight of it and its rings is just breathtaking!

You haven't missed anything yet, the evening of Friday 9th should be the best time to see it.

I'll still miss it. I assure you it will be cloudy and snowy here that day.

Saw it last night, really good view. It has been raining all week and cleared up friday so it was super clear at like 100ft above sea level.

I'll keep a look out for it, it hasn't been cloudy for a while now. The sky's usually clear and crisp at this time of the year, too.

sweet sweet, i never knew what i saw was saturn the past few days, went out to check again but it was cloudy.

i live in India... can i view saturn from the northern hemisphere.

^Yeah, you can.

Click

You can use that link to find where it'll be located in the sky, you just need to put in your latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates (just search on Wikipedia for your nearest city, you should be able to find them easily).

i will try this weekend and tell you. thanks for the link though

http://flux64.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/cas...agon-on-saturn/


March 27, 2007 Pasadena, Calif. — An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA’s Cassini mission.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-034

WOW!!!!!!


http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?i...line-news_rss20

"The hexagon spans nearly 25,000 kilometres – the width of two Earths – and appears to be a clearing in the clouds that extends at least 75 km below the planet's visible cloudtops. Watch a movie of clouds whipping around Saturn's strange hexagon (4.2 MB, gif). http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/vide...es/PIA09187.gif

"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," says team member Kevin Baines of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet."

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn10...south-pole.html

But Saturn's storm also differs from hurricanes on Earth because it is fixed in place – above the south pole – and is not powered by an ocean, since Saturn is a gaseous planet.

"It looks like a hurricane, but it doesn't behave like a hurricane," says Andrew Ingersoll, a member of Cassini's imaging team at Caltech in Pasadena, US. "Whatever it is, we're going to focus on the eye of the storm and find out why it's there."

crystal sage,
as with so many of your posts I fail to see what it has to do with the subject being discussed in this thread. Besides which this subject has at least three threads about it already:

• there is this one, Bizarre hexagon spotted on Saturn, in the Main Front Page News section,
  
• this one, Cassini Images Bizarre Hexagon on Saturn, in the Space News section
  
• and this one, Saturn's North Pole Hexagon in the Metaphysics, Astrology & Psychic Phenomena, section.