(no subject)

[vyvyanx]

Wow! A clear night at last, letting me try out my new binoculars properly. The moon is fantastically bright and sharp; I can see fuzzy clouds of stars in Orion's belt; and I saw a wonderful bright disc of light some way above Orion! It had to be a planet - and checking my planisphere, I found it must be Saturn. I can see Saturn! It's amazing!

Comments

[mtbc100.livejournal.com]

I am glad you're enjoying it. (-: I seem to have entered this stage where I just get depressed about how unreachable it all seems! (Although, there's some hope for Saturn, admittedly; the Pleiades might have to wait, though.)

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. Watching Babylon 5 seemed almost depressing afterwards - I was thinking "Jump gates! That's what we need! Why can't we have them?" :-)
Have you read Stephen Baxter's books? "Titan" is an amazing, mostly plausible and very depressing book about a last-ditch manned mission towards Saturn...fantastic read, if it doesn't reduce you to tears.

[mtbc100.livejournal.com]

I've not read that one! Gets interesting Amazon reviews. Will look out for it: thanks.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

Saturn should be good to see at the moment; a link from SpaceWeather (http://www.spaceweather.com/) pointed to a NASA news item (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/12dec_saturn.htm) on how Saturn is about as close to Earth as it can get (748 million miles) and its rings are also tipped towards us, making it brighter still in the sky.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

Wow - yes, that would explain its remarkable brightness. It was actually quite alarming last night - I was just scanning around the sky with binoculars, noting how many more stars were visible than with the naked eye, how clear their colours and different levels of brightness were - and then suddenly an amazingly bright object came into view, which was obviously a _circle_ of light, not a point! I hadn't even worked out where the planets should be on that occasion, so it was really a surprise. I couldn't make out the rings, really, though.