In the spirit of the International Year of Astronomy, I present this miserable image of Saturn taken last night around 7:30pm CST under clear skies and cold 13 degree temperatures. This was my first attempt at astro imaging our 6th planet from the sun and from previous experience, I can only get improved images in the future. Saturn was sitting on the Eastern horizon and was being effected by atmospheric conditions making it difficult to focus and expose.
Never-the-less, it got me thinking about Galileo's first peeks at Saturn between 1610 and 1616 when Saturn appeared not as a planet with rings, but more like a planet with ears or handles as he wrote in his journals: "The two companions are no longer two small perfectly round globes ... but are present much larger and no longer round ... that is, two half ellipses with two little dark triangles in the middle of the figure and contiguous to the middle globe of Saturn, which is seen, as always, perfectly round".
It got me thinking: Though I was able to see a perfect image of Saturn "on edge" in my 10mm eyepiece, my photographed image was far from perfect - maybe a similar glimpse of what Galileo saw through his 20 power scope over 400 years ago - the difference being, I knew what I was looking at and he really did not until years later when better telescope technology showed clearly that Saturn has a ring system.
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