Night Sky Astronomy

Posts Tagged ‘saturn’

Out of the planets that I had seen through my telescope, I hadn’t seen Venus properly until the end of January this year. Venus has been, and still is, very bright in the sky and at the end of January it was perfectly placed to view in my back garden.

Before viewing the planet, I wasn’t sure what I was going to see. I knew the planet was a sphere and had a blue tint to it but didn’t think that I would see it like that, and I knew it didn’t have any rings so I think I was just expecting to see something like a star in the sky.

It took a couple of nights to actually view Venus properly as on the first night I tried, it was slightly misty, so the planet wasn’t well spotted.  The next night, I waited until it got too dark, so too much light was reflecting from it which dazzled through the telescope. I then read up on viewing Venus and found the best time to view it was at dusk when it was still slightly light and the planet wasn’t too bright. So on my third attempt, I had the telescope outside ready for dusk and saw Venus brilliantly through it!

To my surprise, it did actually look blue! It was like viewing a bluish ball just hanging in Space. It obviously didn’t have the grandeur of Jupiter (Moons and storm clouds) or Saturn (rings) but it was great to see a planet that looked different to the others that I had seen.  I was very pleased with what I saw, to say the least!  The image below is the closest one I could find that looked like what I saw (obviously what I saw was the whole planet and not the half that was in the light).  My telescope is not powerful enough to view the planet in the size below, but I could still see it very well!

The Planet Venus

Venus is still going to be very bright in the sky over the next couple of months, so if you can, I would try and get out and view it!  In fact, the planet is meant to be as bright as the Moon and will cast shadows, which I find very interesting indeed.  The best time to test this would be towards the middle of the month (March) when there is no Moon in the Sky, so Venus should be the main light source during clear nights.

Happy Venus spotting!

For the past few weeks Saturn has been in a great position in the sky to view through either binoculars or telescopes.  It is currently in the Eastern Sky within the Constellation of Virgo.

The planet Saturn in the Constellation of Virgo

I had been trying for a long time to get a good view of the planet via my telescope, but had been scuppered a lot of the time due to bad weather and haze in the sky in the evenings.  The sky has also been brighter later in the evenings now, so I have had to go out later and later each night to view it.  When you have an energetic 2 year old, this is a difficult task as by that time of night, you are shattered!!  😉

Eventually, after many attempts, I managed to get a great view of the planet and could very clearly make out the rings around it.  It was an amazing site and I was very pleased that I managed to get my telescope to focus in correctly.

The Planet Saturn

Some of you may be interested to know that the rings of Saturn are so big that they would nearly reach all the way to the Moon from the Earth, and the planet is so dense that it would float on an ocean.  Amazing.   Saturn also has 60 moons with the most famous being Titan, but unfortunately I was unable to spot any of these through the telescope, though I will try again when the weather is better!

If you have any thoughts or statistics about Saturn, please leave them as comments to this post as I would find any other information very interesting indeed! Thanks!