Hi Starpal friends
I wanted to let you know, that you can have a lot of fun looking at the beautiful ringed planet Saturn in the night sky, right now. By the end of this month and early August, there’ll be a fantastic gathering of not only Saturn, but also the brilliant planets Venus & Mars. And on the 13th August 2010 all these planets will be joined by a beautiful 4 day-old crescent Moon in the western sky. What an incredible sight it’ll be for you to see!
How do you find Saturn, at the moment Saturn is in the constellation of Virgo. The planet looks like a soft yellow star among the stars of Virgo, but with even a small telescope you will find that it has a beautiful ring around it. Saturn is on average about 1.5 billion kilometres away from us; so don’t be disappointed if it is a bit small in the eyepiece of your telescope. Also, if you are trying to find Saturn this month, there is a wonderful web site called Starmaps.com where you can download a star chart for your latitude on Earth for each month of the year, and it’s FREE… please go to: http://www.skymaps.com/downloads.html
(Thank you to Kym Thalassoudis for this wonderful educational resource)
I am one of NASA’s (JPL) Saturn Observation Campaign members here in Australia, and for the past 8 years I’ve had a lot of fun showing everybody this beautiful planet in my large telescope. You may even have a SOC member in your area that’s doing a Saturn event right now at a local library or community centre. Please go to the SOC web page to see if you have a SOC member in your area at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/education/saturnobservation/
If you would like to know more about the incredible Cassini spacecraft and see all the stunning images it’s taken of Saturn and its mysterious icy moons, please go to NASA’s Cassini-Huygens web site at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
And that’s not all…if you would like to make a lovely model of Saturn to hang up in your room, please go to NASA’s Spacekids site at: http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/cassini_make1.shtml
Amazing Saturn is in your skies right now…so what are you waiting for, race outside tonight and take a look 
From your Starpal astronomer…. Noeleen Lowndes (SOC member in Australia)
