The Universe through my telescope II

My last post in this series (yes, I plan to make this a series, provided I am able to click good pictures), The Universe through my telescope II, is one of the most popular posts on my blog. The comment section indicated that even though the images didn't have the magnification, resolution or clarity of the amazing Hubble images (the background of my blog has one such image), everyone was excited to know that one would see the craters on the moon, latitudinal cloud bands on Jupiter or the rings around Saturn with such a simple instrument.

In this post I am going to share a few pictures of Saturn alone. But before we go to the pictures, lets have a short history lesson on the discovery of Saturn's rings.

Galileo was the first person to look at Saturn with a telescope. With his simple refractor telescope, in 1610, he observed that Saturn had two big (I mean BIG!!!) moons on either side. A couple of years later, he saw that the giant moons of Saturn had disappeared and they were replaced by what Galileo thought were extensions from main planetary body. This became a trend and he observed the moons and the "arms" alternating, every couple of years. The following are his drawings of Saturn's moons and arms.

Credit: NASA GSFC

A decade after Galileo's death, Christian Huygens used a more powerful telescope (it should be noted that telescopes become more and more powerful every decade, even today. Just like Moore's law for computer hardware, there should be an analogous law for telescopes). He realized that the arms around Saturn are actually rings. He also developed a theory which clearly describes why Saturn's rings look different every year. The earth takes one earth year to go around the Sun (it surprises me when Lawrence Krauss says that 50% of Americans do not know this) while Saturn takes around 30 earth years. Hence we look at Saturn and its rings from a different angle every year which was the source of confusion for Galileo. The following is his prediction of how Saturn would look from Earth, taking into account the axis tilt of both Saturn and Earth.

Systema Saturnium (1659), Oeuvres Completes de Christiaan Huygens, XV: 312

Here are the phases of Saturn that can be seen from Earth.

Systema Saturnium (1659): Oeuvres Completes de Christiaan Huygens, XV, end plate

Finally, here are the pictures from my telescope. Last year's photo showed an edge-on view of Saturn's rings. This year's pictures show the rings separate from the main planetary body due to the change in phase.

Though the following picture doesn't have a good resolution, I uploaded it to  show that even though I have a telescope that is much more powerful than what Galileo used, a low resolution image still shows two big moons on either side of Saturn. I was really excited to see this image.

This is the best picture of Saturn I have clicked to date. One can even see the gap between the rings and the main planetary body. I was amazed by the clarity of this picture.

I am still using a 130 mm reflector telescope with 10mm eyepiece that can magnify the image by 65 times. And the pictures were clicked with my phone's 5 MP camera. I am planning to upgrade the telescope's eyepiece and filters soon, with which, I should get better pictures of not only Saturn, but also the other planets.