Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Tuesday, May 8th.  The sun rises at 6:22.  It’ll be up for 14 hours and 33 minutes, setting at 8:56.   The moon, 3 days past full, will rise at 12:09 tomorrow morning.

The planet Saturn is a wonderful sight in telescopes now.  In a little as 20 power a spotting scope with show Saturn’s rings, but may not distinctly separate the planet out.  At 50 power the planet is easily separated from the rings.  It you have a telescope with eyepieces of differing focal lengths and/or a Barlow lens that doubles the magnification of your eyepieces, you can experiment with using higher powers.  I like a crisp image at lower powers rather than a fuzzy image at higher powers.  Saturn’s rings are its best known feature.  They are about 170 thousand miles wide and perhaps only a hundred feet thick.  They aren’t solid but billions of small icy particles each orbiting Saturn at their own speed, and kept in line by collisions with its ring mates.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Image of Saturn created with Cartes di Ciel showing current ring tilt.

The rings as they appear from earth.  The outside ring is the A ring.  Then the dark Cassini’s Division, which is sometimes hard to spot.  Then the broad and bright B ring.  The inner C ring is hard to spot.