Spotting Saturn

[Ramya]

I've been looking for Saturn for a few weeks and read that it's close to spica. Now, looking south of east i can see a large triangle(somewhere between isoscelles and right-angled) with very bright vertices. I'm sure one of them is spica and the other is arcturus so does that mean that the third is Saturn? I have a pair of 10x50s but thay don't make it any better as it still looks like a yellow disc. Also, my eyes aren't very good so I can't make out whether it's twinkling or not. Can someone help, please?

[Astro Imp]

Hi Ramya,

Have you downloaded Stellarium? This is a great free planatarium program that will help you find your way around the night sky.

From your description I would think that you have found Saturn, you should see a fainter star (Porrima) just to the north west.

HTH.

[DarkSky71]

Your not going to see much with Saturn with binoculars. I have 20 x 60 bins and can see dimension to saturn to distinguish it from stars but still 30-40x magnification is about right to start seeing the rings

[stick]

saturn was just NW of the moon last night

use stellarium or the starwalk app on a smart phone

it should look like a bright yellowish star that doesnt twinkle

not sure how much youll see through binos though

good luck

[banner001]

This is looking south at 11pm tonight from huddersfield, Arcturus is top middle, Spica is bottom middle, to the right of Spica is the moon, and above the moon is Saturn.

Saturn will be bright, like a star, it should be a little brighter than Spica.

[Ad Astra]

Wow! Nice photo, Banner!

Dan

[brantuk]

Errrm .... it's a screen dump from Stellarium I think lol

[Ad Astra]

Ha, Ha! Busted again!!! :o

Dan

Errrm .... it's a screen dump from Stellarium I think lol

[banner001]

it is a screen dump, but it is a panorama of our back yard, i lightened it a bit for the screen print so Ramya can see aprox heights