Jump to content

Discovery of Titan?

mrdiki

By mrdiki
in Welcome

Recommended Posts

mrdiki

mrdiki

Posted
Posted

I am a complete astro-nerd and just starting to look at the night sky with a pair of celestron 20 * 80's.

I get some good views of the moons of Jupiter and believe that I have seen Titan, Saturn's moon, using the above bino's. To Corroborate this I have checked my observations on Stellarium and all seems ok.

So my question is this: if Galileo could see the 4 moons of Jupiter in 1610 with his rudimentary telescope why did it take another 45 years before Huygens was able to confirm the existence of Titan?

Surely if my Celestrrons can see Titan, the telescopes of Galileo's early observing career would also have been able to see it?

Alternatively, could I be looking at something other than Titan?

Responses appreciated, many thanks.

Mrdiki

Link to comment
Share on other sites
badgers

badgers

Posted
Posted

I think Gallileo's telescope could manage about 15-20x magnification. The aperture of these telescopes was really badly limited as the glass distorted very badly towards the edge of the field and contained bubbles. The effective aperture was only around 1 inch and provided a small field of view (15 arc minutes or so).

I guess the theory was sound by Gallileo's time, but glass and polishing technology took a long time to catch up.

Really nice page on this here:

http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/instruments/telescope.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites
michael.h.f.wilkinson

michael.h.f.wilkinson

Posted
Posted

Welcome to SGL. Huygens did not just discover Titan, he was also the first to see the rings as rings, not weird distorted appendages to the planet. He did this because he was the first to recognize that a slow scope did not suffer from aberrations half as much as a fast scope. He built massively long telescopes, with I think 4" of aperture, and this is how he got much sharper images.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
acey

acey

Posted
Posted

If Galileo saw Titan he would most likely have mistaken it for a background star - he appears to have made this mistake in regard to Neptune, while Uranus was observed and recorded as a star (by Flamsteed) before Herschel discovered it to be a planet. Recognising the true nature of such bodies requires reobservation over a period of time to show that they are not "fixed stars". With the Galilean moons of Jupiter it's much easier to see that they are associated with the planet because of the way they are strung out, and because observation over a few nights or even hours shows them to be moving with respect to each other.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.