At opposition, Saturn shines at magnitude +0.1, brighter than the red-supergiant star Antares, which is a magnitude fainter than Saturn, well to the west, although it is much fainter than Jupiter which also lies to its west this year. It resumes its eastward (prograde) motion on October 11. The planet has been retrograding westward against the background stars a little each day since May 23. Like last year, Saturn reaches opposition in the southern reaches of the ecliptic this year in the constellation Capricornus (see below).
RINGS OF SATURN THROUGH TELESCOPE HOW TO
Here’s how to find it and see it in a small telescope. The planet reaches opposition on Augand will remain bright and large in a telescope over the next few months. It is arguably the finest sight accessible with a small telescope. And incredibly beautiful… the color, the proportions, the apparent 3D perspective of this grand icy world. More than a few have looked through my small refractor on a night of good seeing and asked of Saturn, “Is it real?” Many casual observers get hooked on amateur astronomy after a first look at Saturn through a telescope. CNN contributed to this report.This composite image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 6 June 2018, shows the ringed planet Saturn with six of its 62 known moons. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. These new observations from the Webb telescope "are just a hint at what this observatory will add to Saturn's story in the coming years," NASA says, "as the science team delves deep into the data to prepare peer-reviewed results." In the future, additional and deeper exposures from Webb will help astronomers examine fainter rings around Saturn, according to NASA. Over the years, Saturn's atmosphere and rings have been observed by other missions such as NASA's Pioneer 11, Voyagers 1 and 2, the Cassini spacecraft and the Hubble Space Telescope. This latest detailed image comes just weeks after the Webb telescope spotted a record-breaking water plume erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus, which feeds Saturn's diffuse E ring, according to NASA. Launched on Christmas Day in 2021, Webb can study the beginning of time more closely, hunt for unobserved formations among the first galaxies, and peer inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are currently forming. The brightening near the edge of Saturn's disk might be due to high-altitude methane fluorescence (the process of emitting light after absorbing light) or emissions in the planet's ionosphere or both.
But the darker-than-usual appearance of the northern hemisphere could be from "an unknown seasonal process affecting polar aerosols in particular," NASA says. Unexpectedly, "the large, diffuse structures in the northern hemisphere do not follow the planet's lines of latitude, so this image is lacking the familiar striped appearance that is typically seen from Saturn's deeper atmospheric layers," according to NASA.ĭifferences in the looks of Saturn's northern and southern poles are normal, according to NASA, as the northern region experiences summertime while the southern hemisphere is exiting winter darkness. These exposures test Webb's ability to spot faint moons around the planet and its rings, since any newly discovered moons could help scientists better understand Saturn's present and past systems. The image was taken with Webb's Near-Infrared Camera, known as NIRCam, as part of a Webb program that involves several exceptionally deep exposures of Saturn, according to NASA. The near-infrared observations of the ringed planet are a first for the highly sensitive telescope, according to NASA - which, at 1.5 million kilometers (nearly 932,000 miles) from Earth, observes the universe with wavelengths of light longer than those of other space telescopes. The rings, however, remain bright, creating the "unusual appearance" of the planet in this photo, according to NASA. In the image, Saturn itself appears extremely dark due to the near-total absorption of sunlight by methane gas. The Cassini division is the largest of the gaps in Saturn's ring system. Saturn's moons Dione, Enceladus and Tethys dot the left side, while the Cassini division, Encke gap and rings A, B, C and F are shown on the right side. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore is the mission operations center for the telescope.
(CNN) - Astronomers have discovered surprising details about Saturn's atmosphere, using a new image captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
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