Sunday, February 11, 2007

Lucky Saturn


Saturn, to me, it is the most beautiful planet after the Earth. The rings of Saturn have fascinated multitudes for ages and still draw out the 'oooh's & 'wow's everytime I show it to people through a telescope.

Here is a page with more pictures by Christopher Go. He has been following it with a telescope for the past year of "Saturn season". You can catch it for yourself too. All of the next month or so, it is going to be a nice, bright, starlike evening object in the East.

10th February 2007 [the day the above pic was taken] was the day of opposition for Saturn. 'Opposition' is the time when the Earth lies between an outer planet and the Sun, making the Sun and planet appear in opposite directions as viewed from the Earth. So to us, the planet rises as the Sun sets. Now magine yourself out in space and draw out the position of the Sun and the orbits of the earth and the planet on opposition day. Its easy to see that the Earth will be closest to the planet on this day. The distance in between them is of course the distance between their orbits, which is unimaginably huge. The occurrence of oppostion for various planets differs and it was Saturn's turn yesterday.

Since the early morn TV channels were full of 'news' about what all can happen on this day and how there were so many people praying to appease saturn!

"Saturn is the worst planet to have in your horoscope... & God forbid if it be close to the earth at that time... All hell will be let loose!"

So say some of the astrologers. Or at least thats the picture they paint, but will deny it when countered. In India, for ages Shani or Saturn - the angry god has been the harbinger of bad luck.

It seems that the media did finally remember that there are some dudes who are more in touch with Saturn than the astrologers [most of whom have not even seen it!]. So we had a TV team from a channel at our Science centre for a 2 minute interview to counter all the stuff transmitted all day. My senior put up a few good points. I happenned to barge in with one point that was missed and got invited to face the camera too. I was instantly transformed into an expert on astronomy giving comments on TV about the latest sensational celestial event!

I dont know about the half a billion Leo's who walk the Earth. They are "predicted" to share the same bad luck for the next few months, due to Saturn's presence in a group of stars that resembles a Lion, if your imagination can leap like one. But it turned out to be very lucky for me... If you believe that Saturn favours me, then please contact me for more details on "How to use Saturn to become famous!"

For more time-pass follow the following weblinks to sites about the spaceship Cassini, which is near Saturn doing a lot of research.


More Links:
JPL >> NASA

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm a Leo. So am I in deep sh-ea-t?

Zehra S said...

Saturn is nice. I'm a huge fan of Jupiter tho and oddly, my leo friend is having a bit of bad luck recently :D