see saturn's rings through a telescope

there are the Sidewalk Astronomers.

On the Big Island, at the visitor’s center at Mauna Kea, there is public viewing, I think almost every night.

Amateur astronomers bring out their telescopes and find planets and star clusters and let you look.

Saturn was amazing to me because the rings instead of edge on like a plate were more vertical when I looked. I didn’t know that happened.

There is a blank looking space in between the two most visible ring set called the Cassini division. It’s kind of cool to know to look for that. If the scope you are using does not have that amount of definition, you can ask if maybe there is another scope you can look through that will let you see that blank looking area.

We live out in the boonies and an amateur astronomer friend of ours brought his 8 inch reflecting telescope (about 4 foot tall) and we saw the rings of Saturn, Jupiter, and 3 different galaxies.

Please read about this on my blog:

http://neffland.blogspot.com/2006/05/featureless-fuzz.html

a white gorgeous planet with rings!

On the Big Island of Hawaii, at the top of Mauna Kea. Priceless.

Postponing.

Seeing Saturn’s rings through a telescope can be greatly helped by good timing, the view from our vantagepoint is cyclical over years. Some years we see them from an oblique angle, sort of looking down on them or from under them, and they are easier to see, even through amateur telescopes. Other years we see them “edge on” and since they are so thin, it can appear as though there are no rings at all. I’m not sure where we are in the cycle right now, but I saw them once from our driveway with the help of my Dad and his telescope some years ago.

I saw Saturn at Vanderbilt University’s Dyer Observatory when I was in college. I bought a used telescope last week at a thrift store, and saw Saturn on my first night out. This weekend I saw Jupiter and three of its moons. I don’t know a lot about telescopes, and I’m glad my telescope has an equatorial mount. I want to see a galaxy next.

This is amazing ! My boyfriend showed me through his expensive telescope. I was captivated by it! I looked at it for about 30 minutes solid out in the cold of the night. The rings were so beautiful! Highly recommended, can’t say that i’m most interested in astronomy, but this is an experience that you must have when saturn is in the correct position! It’s small but spectular!

...and my teacher was a huge astronomy fanatic, and had her entire class over one night to look through her (very powerful and very cool) telescope. I had developed a special interest in astronomy and she made it a point to spend a lot of time with me, pointing out various constellations and celestial objects.

A very happy memory. (One I could use to produce my Patronus, perhaps?)

After seeing a total eclipse a number of years ago I asked started asking some friends “What have you done in your lifetime that you think everyone should do” and one of the answers I got back was “See Saturn’s Rings through a telescope” ...

... so a number of years later I had the opportunity to look through a friends 5” reflector, and I was really surprised at how impressed I was. We’re not talking Hubble Quality images! but my 11 year old daughter and I surprised our selves by being so absorbed that we spent a couple of hours on a freezing cold winter’s evening looking at Saturn’s rings, the Andromeda galaxy, Orion and the craters on the moon. All of them “Wow!” objects for a newcomer.

So to cut a long story short, I was hooked and bought a 12” Dobsonian reflector shortly after that and have both found a new hobby and had the joy of dinner guests going “Wow!” when they look at the stars for the first time through a telescope.