Seeing Saturn in a Telescope O_O

Something trippy. I don't look through nice telescopes often, so when I went to the Gretna Observatory last night, which is open for public viewing on Monday/Wednesday nights after dark, I was BAHLOWN away by the real image of Saturn!

It's crazy! You can just look out there in the darkness, point the telescope at the right spot, and there it is. A bright, ringed planet. Real image in real time. Not some video playback.

This image was the closest I could find, to compare to what I actually saw.

And another crazy thing is that it appears to be MOVING. And rather QUICKLY! After you fix the telescope to get it in view, it moves across the scope in less than a minute, looks like it's flying.

At first glace, the planet looks like a "flying star," so I asked the 2 astronomers I was with: "is it really moving that fast? Why is it moving so fast?" Instead of answering my question, they told me to think about it. Then I understood it was because Earth was also rotating. It's a higher level of thought, to grasp that, every perspective is a relative perspective; it's understandable how past astronomers could have gotten it wrong, thinking geocentrically. But from Earth, the planet Saturn is still beautiful.

You can see Saturn in the sky with your naked eyes, but you'd need a slightly attuned eye to distinguish it from a star. Planets are actually visible in the sky often throughout the year, especially Venus, Jupiter, and Mars, but most people just think they're stars. This thing is also in the sky throughout the year, but often obscured from view, by light pollution and atmosphere.

We live in this shit, and it's in the sky every night.

I also saw Mars in real time, which was cool to see, thinking we have some SUV-sized rovers up there, taking pictures and collecting samples. One day might have people out there. Pretty far out. A mission to Mars is pretty crazy.... exciting to think about. New frontiers.


The local astronomer guy also pointed the telescope at some globular clusters. He called some "deep space objects." Not like the planets nearby, further out, but still a part of the Milky Way. In fact, I learned that there are a lot of globular clusters (big clumps of stars, gravitationally attached) going around our galactic center, what many believe to be a SMBH (Super Massive Black Hole).

M11, or Messier 11

Pretty crazy that you can just look out and see this shit. I am fascinated by space.