Two Saturns

[Spile]

I have just realised that the Saturn Nebula NGC 7009 and Saturn are currently very close to one another at the moment.

[Astro_Dad]

Yes it’s an interesting juxtaposition @Spile- the August addition of S@N magazine mentioned this (Saturn below and to the East of the nebula) and I remember being keen to observe it and see it in the context of the gas giant. As I posted in my observing report at the time,  I was unable to discern any of the elusive blue hue  on the nebula but it did look to me very much like an out of focus Saturn!
Thanks, You’ve reminded me to go and have another look at this target. 

[RobertI]

Thanks for the heads up. I saw Mars and M1 (Crab Nebula) in the same field of view recently, which was a nice surprise an unusual juxtaposition. I’ll look out for the Saturns. 

[Les Ewan]

In the early hours of 5th January 2003 Saturn crossed in front of the Crab Nebula and I  was lucky enough to have good seeing conditions at the time. Not that I saw anything however. Using a 8" Newtonian  the Crab was totally blotted out by Saturn's glare, but even so the negative result of seeing nothing of the nebula was still interesting.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Les Ewan

[Nik271]

Thanks for the heads up! I managed to observe both this evening at about 7pm. Used my 120mm Mak and the Baader Hyperion 24mm ep. Saturn is tiny at low magnification but the star hops from it to the Saturn nebula were easy despite the mild haze. Some elongation was noticeable on the nebula which became more prominent at 124x with the BST 8mm. It is surprisingly bright, could still see it even when the evening mist obliterated most of the stars naked eye. Finally I ended the session looking at the only object still visible, Jupiter which showed some detail in the main belts. 

Transparency has been poor  lately but we have to take what we can. Planetary nebulae, double stars  and of course the planets are my main observing targets.

 

Clear skies!

[Gfamily]

On 30/10/2022 at 17:33, Les Ewan said:

In the early hours of 5th January 2003 Saturn crossed in front of the Crab Nebula and I  was lucky enough to have good seeing conditions at the time. Not that I saw anything however. Using a 8" Newtonian  the Crab was totally blotted out by Saturn's glare, but even so the negative result of seeing nothing of the nebula was still interesting.

You may already know this, but that event allowed the Chandra space telescope to take observations of the upper atmosphere of Titan in X Ray using the Crab as an X-Ray source. 

It's likely that this was the first transit of the Crab Nebula by Titan since its creation in 1054 -  it often gets close, but very rarely exactly transits it. 

[Les Ewan]

Amazing. I didn't know that thanks for the info.