Seeing Saturn

On Saturday night, I saw Saturn and it's rings through a telescope for the first time.  It really was an amazing experience seeing the elongated rings around the planet, tiny as it was.

It has reminded me how much I want to check out the Brisbane Astronomical Society and go along to one of their public viewing nights (number 5 on my list).

19 July 2013 was 'The day the Earth smiled', whereNASA's Cassini (a spacecraft that is currently orbiting Saturn), turned it's camera on Earth and took a photo of Saturn and it's rings with Earth in the background.  There were lots of events around the globe to celebrate this fun, slightly arbitrary day, but the photos that resulted are really quite amazing.

Photo of Earth from Saturn.  Image from NASA's Photo Journal.