Lord Of the Rings!

As seen from the earth, Saturn appears to wobble with a period of approximately 14 years.  This is an illusion. Each planet's orbital plane around the Sun is different and is inclined at at various angles.Saturn takes around 30 "Earth years" to make one orbit around the Sun. Our own earth's orbit, crosses Saturn's orbit once every 14 years. During these "Ring plane crossings",  Saturn's rings just look like a thin line across Saturn.

                This graphic nicely illustrates how Saturn's rings appear from earth from 1993-2020.

The last 2 "Ring plane crossings" were in 1995 & 2009.

Here are my photos of Saturn at various times from 2005 to 2013,
taken through a camera attached to my telescope.

Jan. 15, 2005, Boston. The rings  appear wide open and reflect maximum Sun light.
Photo taken during the middle of a cold winter. My finger tips were frozen!!! :)

June 21, 2008, San Diego. 9 months before the 2009 Ring plane crossing.
The rings appear almost as a straight line.
In San Diego, I didn't have to worry about frozen fingers! :))

May 1, 2013, San Diego. Rings appear to be opening up!

More than 400 years ago, in 1610, when Galileo turned his primitive telescope towards Saturn, he thought he saw an object made of 3 stars and recorded it as shown in the image on the left.  Two years later, when Saturn's rings became thin, his telescope didn't show the rings and he recorded that the companions had vanished :))






Saturn is almost a billion miles from earth. Though I have seen Saturn countless times, I never get tired of viewing and enjoying it through my telescope.