Saturn will be seen without rings from Monday. The rings of the planet will be tilted edge-on to the earth, making it impossible for them to see even through a telescope. This rare phenomenon only occurs every 14 to 15 years.
‘Saturn is going through a phase called ‘ring crossing’ when its rings become aligned just along our line of sight and are therefore becoming difficult to see. Something like this was first noticed around 400 years ago when Galileo first turned his telescope towards Saturn,’ said director, Nehru Planetarium, Dr Rathnasree, on Sunday.
She said: ‘These rings keep tilting in different directions as viewed from Earth due to changing geometry as Saturn moves around the sun. Sometimes, the geometry is very favourable - the rings appear face on and appear spread out and clearly visible. This had happened in 2000.’
‘Since then the view of Saturn’s rings has been slowly tilting towards us in such a way that they are now visible almost edge-on,’ she added. According to Dr Sandeep Sahijpal, physics department, Panjab University: ‘Among the four outer giant planets in the solar system, Saturn has the most prominent ring system. The entire ring structure is confined to almost a single orbital plane with an average thickness of approximately few tens of meters. The ring structure extends from approximately 6,500 to 2,00,000 km above the Saturn’s equator,’ he said.
He added: ‘After every 14.7 years the ring system makes a zero degree angle with respect to us. Since the ring system is extremely thin, the entire system becomes invisible during this period when viewed so far away from the planet. This happens after every 14.7 years.’
‘Over the next month, we are going to witness the missing ring system as we will be viewing the ring almost edge-on. During this period the entire ring system will be aligned almost along the orbit of the Saturn. Over the next couple of weeks in August 2009, the inclination angle of ring system with respect to us will gradually reduce. It will become exactly zero around September 4. The ring system will subsequently reappear gradually,’ he said.
