Saturn Floats

by Craig Colvin

I was getting ready for bed and happened to look out the backdoor and was amazed to see the clearest sky I've seen in a month. I aborted bedtime, and grabbed my scope (XT10) and set it up on the back patio between several large puddles. Sat down to look at Jupiter first and was surprised to see a shadow from a moon! I watch of a little while and decide to swing around and look at Saturn. Due to the weather and schedule I haven't had much opportunity to observe Saturn this winter and have been missing it. It looked great. I could easily make out 4 moons with a 5th occasionally popping in to view. As I look at Saturn I recall something my 6 year old son told me a dinner. He said that he learned in school today that if you could find a big enough swimming pool, that Saturn would float. So I stared at Saturn trying to imagine how it would look floating in a pool of water and how many gallons of water it would take. Fun stuff.

I decide to see how the shadow transit is progressing on Jupiter and as I swing back around I notice that clouds have rolled in covering the eastern sky, I can barely make out Jupiter and the moon. I take a look at Jupiter anyway and am actually impressed with the detail I can see. The shadow is very evident and the seeing actually appears better through the clouds than previously. After a few minutes the clouds clear out and I catch a glimpse of a moon transiting on the opposite side of Jupiter from the shadow. I go inside to get on the computer and determine that I'm seeing Ganymed and it's shadow. I also see that Callisto is transiting as well. Back outside I try to see Callisto but no luck. I watch until the shadow ends at which point the clouds have started rolling back in. I put the scope away and call it a night. Even though it was short it was a lot of fun looking at the shallow sky after weeks of cloudy weather.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Sat Feb 7 00:12:19 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Sun Feb 8 08:40:39 2004 PT