Question about Saturn

[DJVege]

Hey guys,

Is Saturn always visible to the naked eye, yearly, in the Southern Hemisphere? Or are there some years where we can never see it with the naked eye?

In particular, was Saturn visible in May, 2007 - 2009, from Australia?

A mate is arguing with me that it wasn't visible, but I say it was... ?? Losing my sanity over it....

Need your help to put this to bed please.

Thanks.

...DJVege...

[Allan]

Tell your mate he doesn't know what he's talking about. Saturn is always visible to the naked eye, except for the few weeks every year when it disappears behind the sun and re-appears again in the morning sky.

[DJVege]

Thanks Alan. My sanity is returning.

And do we know which few weeks during the year? I want all my bases covered. :)

[Allan]

This year Saturn is at conjunction in mid November. Next year at the end of November. 2016 early December and so on. So it occurs every year plus about 2 weeks.

[DJVege]

Thanks Alan. Much appreciated. I'll can board my flight in peace now. :)

[Allan]

Awesome. You'll be able to chill out now and par take in some in flight refreshments. :D

[julianh72]

If you have access to pretty well any planetarium app, you can type in any date and time, and check out what was visible in the past, or will be in the future.

[noeyedeer]

Saturn in may 2007 was not visable at night in Australia, so your friend is right. Saturn is visable around 6 months of a year and at that time it wasn't.

matt

I'm guessing naked eye means at night time when you can see it unlike during the day ...
may 2008 it was visable at night .. so they were wrong .. and may 2009 visable at night

edit : Saturn was visable in may for all 3 years sorry I had the times wrong .. so you are correct for all 3 years disregaurd the above. that's 3 years in may

[Allan]

You can go outside and see Saturn for 11 months of the year. For the couple of weeks either side of conjunction it is not possible to view it.

When Saturn is at opposition, you can obviously see it all night. As it approaches conjunction you might be able to see it for only a few minutes before it sets, but never the less you can view it low in the western sky. Then a month later you can get up early and see it again low in the eastern sky for a short time before the rising sun overwhelms it.

[Wavytone]

DJ,

It's possible your mate was confusing visibility of Saturn with visibility of saturns rings - and indeed in that period the rings were barely visible for two reasons - around the time when saturn's pole is exactly perpendicular to the sun, such that the sun lies on the plane of the rings, the rings are not well lit, which happened in August 2009.

In addition, recall that earths orbit us inside the orbit of Saturn. When Saturn is close to this point in its orbit, from earth we are viewing the rings almost edge-on most of the time and worse, earth passes through the ring plane twice each of those years - when seen edge on the rings are so thin they can't be seen at all.

Their visibility in recent years has been far better because Saturn's pole is approaching its maximum tilt from the sun in 2017.

Similarly in 1994-6 Saturn was rather disappointing to look at.

See the figure second from the top here http://www.classicalastronomy.com/news/anmviewer.asp?a=313&z=28

[SkyWatch]

An easy way to solve such arguments in the future is to download Stellarium (freeware: just google it), and simply input the time and place. You can zoom in to the planets and find exactly how they look at any time (including the orientation of Saturn's rings, or the GRS on Jupiter).

Have fun!

- Dean

[DJVege]

Yep, I'm pretty sure he is confused with the rings as well...

Thanks for all the info guys. I'm just happy it is right in my head. :)

[Starlite]

:(The gap between the trees is my window of opportunity for viewing Saturn now that it is low in the west, about 7 minutes.....

[G58]

Astronomy Australia is a good yearly book to buy
it has rise and set times for the planets.

[Starlite]

This little fella punches above his weight with a 2x tv barlow and 19mm Panoptic waiting for Saturn. 20" Obsession last night, 76mm dob tonight, tomorrow night will be a 50mm $30 Tasco with plastic lenses with lots of swearing and cussing and laughing and wondering how they did it in the 1700's.Did you know that Galileo was the first astronomer to swear and cuss about light pollution !!!. A nun at the convent walked past him at 2am with a candle to go to the outhouse and copped a barrage of Italian swearwords.:)