Sky matters: Saturn is well-placed to inspire a generation of young kids
I still recall the first time I saw the planet Saturn through a small telescope from my parent’s back garden in Clondalkin, writes .
I was 10 years old and this giant planet that I had read so much about was now actually visible to me, not merely in pictures but in real life! It seemed to be almost hanging from a thread, with its stunning rings plainly visible.
I rushed inside to cajole my less-than-enthusiastic family to share this moment of discovery and much to my surprise, that’s exactly what they did.
Roll the clock forward to June 2018, and the planet Saturn is well-placed to inspire a generation of young kids and perhaps a generation who missed the opportunity when they were younger.
Use the moon to find Saturn
The easiest way to spot Saturn is to look for a relatively bright star-like object to the lower left of the full moon on June 27.
The brightness of the full moon itself will make observing the planet less than ideal, but once you know where Saturn is, you can wait a few days for the moon to move out of its way and observing conditions will improve significantly.
Somewhat easier to spot this month are Venus and Jupiter, both visible in the evening sky, Venus to the west and really too bright to miss, and Jupiter to the south.
While not as bright as Venus, Jupiter is the brightest object to the south and you should have no difficulty in spotting it.
Jupiter also has rings of its own, as do Uranus and Neptune, but these are not generally visible from Earth.
The origin of ring systems are still unclear, but we do know they are composed almost entirely of water ice and this could be useful for human missions to the outer solar system.
The two favourite theories are that they are the remnants of moons that never were, or resulted from collisions of moons circa 3-4bn years ago.
Unknowns of our solar system
The fact that we don’t yet fully understand how rings are formed around planets echoes our lack of understanding of how our own solar system, and our own home planet, were formed.
Just as studying a very small group of people will never give you the full story of evolution, looking only at planets in our own solar system will likely leave questions unanswered.
We need to look farther afield.
In April, the latest mission to search for “interesting” planetary systems (exoplanets) was launched.
The Nasa Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was launched by Space X, a remarkable event in itself in that a private company was the one chosen to launch a Nasa deep-space mission.
The most interesting planetary systems discovered by TESS will be the subjects for more detailed follow-on studies which should ultimately help us to understand how our solar system planets formed and maybe even whether rings are common.
One can dream of a time in the future when we have perfected interstellar travel, when our travels take us close enough to other star systems so that we can observe planets there. I hope some have rings.
And I hope the observers have the same sense of awe that I did when I looked at Saturn from a small garden in a small village with a small telescope on a small but stunningly beautiful planet.
