I love showing people Saturn. Clearly visible even with city light pollution, and rings can be resolved even with cheap hardware.
Kind of nuts how long people can live without ever seeing the rings for themselves.
I saw Saturn at an observatory long before I had my own telescope, but that heart-skip-a-beat moment the first time you see Saturn with your own telescope is like nothing else.
I remembering bringing my 5" dobson to a work retreat camping trip. Everyone was pretty boozed up to the point where they were struggling to keep their eyes steady in the eyepiece.
When one of my coworkers finally got everything lined up he just blurted out “HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT’S SATURN!”
It was great.
Oh man, I always wanted a dobs. They were significantly more expensive than Newtonians when I was shopping around (not sure if that’s still true, this was the 90s), so I ended up with a Newtonian.
Maybe a silly question, but are the rings locked to Saturn’s rotation axis? I.e. is it the rings that tilted or both rings and planet?
From the planet itself they would appear stationary, yes. From basically any other solar system body they change because basically everything orbits at wonky angles.
It’s just getting more and more hidden in Oblivion
Reminded me of this guy.
When Oryx activated his super weapon, he inadvertently affected Saturn’s axis…
