Sky and Telescope - June 2016 - 49

Learn how to use detailed star charts to find the faintest possible
things you can see with your telescope: skyandtelescope.com/charts.

Saturn at Opposition

North

Orbits of
Phobos and Deimos...
Deimos
Mars
East

West

...around 2016
opposition

Phobos

Alan MacRobert

20"

South
Deimos never gets more than three Mars diameters from Mars's
limb. Phobos always remains within just one. Try for them when
they're at their northwest and southeast elongations.

time when the seeing is excellent. Watch for a prediction
of good, steady seeing for your location up to 48 hours
in advance using the Clear Sky Charts seeing forecast at
cleardarksky.com/csk/.
At the eyepiece, take your time looking. Lots of time.
Get comfortable; sit if you can. Use averted vision, with
Mars behind the occulting bar. Once you glimpse your
Martian moon, you'll glimpse it more readily thereafter.
Don't be fooled by an internal reflection! When you
shift the telescope a little, that faint speck should move
exactly the same as Mars does.
If you don't succeed, make a mental note for 2018.
That summer Mars will grow to 24.3″ wide, compared
to its 18.6″ late this May and early June. Phobos and Deimos will appear proportionately farther from the center
of Mars, and all will be 0.8 magnitude brighter.

Saturn and Mars shine fairly close to each other in May
and early June, hanging over the twinkly stars of Scorpius
with Saturn to Mars's east. So it's no surprise that Saturn
comes to opposition shortly after Mars does: on the night
of June 2nd, following the May 22nd Martian opposition.
If you're out with your scope for one of them, you'll surely
spend time with both.
If Saturn looks brighter to the naked eye than you remember from a few years ago, you're right. Saturn's rings are
now tilted a majestic 26° to our line of sight, almost as wide
open as we can ever see them. So the rings reflect to us
almost twice as much sunlight as Saturn's globe does. In a
telescope, the rings now extend beyond both the north and
south poles of Saturn, affording a clear view of their outer
perimeter all around. This is only just barely the case in the
image below, taken last year.
So it's a very good year to look for the finest possible
details in the rings. Can you trace the dark Cassini Division
all the way around? How apparent is the dusky C Ring close
to the planet? It's semitransparent; look for its gray band
against the planet's face inside the B Ring. And can you
make out the C Ring's faint gray glow in the area where it's
seen against the dark background of space?
Notice the different levels of brightness across the B and
A rings. Both are brightest next to the Cassini Division.
When the seeing settles down to be especially still, can
you see anything else going on? For a real challenge with a
12-inch or larger scope, can you detect the tiny hairline of
South
Equatorial Zone

C ring on globe

Cassini Division

Mars Itself
As for that dazzling desert ball next to those perhaps
invisible specks? Now is your chance to log some of the
many famous surface features that have eluded you for
years. One side of Mars is relatively bland and bright; the
other is more mottled with darkish albedo features. The
North Polar Cap is currently very small, and shrinking
even further, in the late summer of the Martian northern hemisphere. If you see a lot of white near the southern limb of Mars, and if this is south of the great dark
Syrtis Major, that's not the south cap (which is tilted
slightly out of view) but clouds or frosts fi lling the large
Hellas basin. To identify features, you'll need to know
which part of Mars is facing you; use our Mars Profi ler
at skyandtelescope.com/marsprofiler. See our Mars map
and detailed telescopic guide in the April S&T, page 48.

RINGS

A

B

C

Encke Gap

North Equatorial Belt
Direction
of rotation

North Polar Region
North
Saturn's rings were tilted 25°, almost as much as they are now, when Damian
Peach took this very sharp image on March 10, 2015, using a planetary video
camera on a 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain scope.
DAMIAN PEACH

Sk yandTelescope.com June 2016

49


http://www.skyandtelescope.com/charts http://www.cleardarksky.com/csk/ http://www.skyandtelescope.com/marsprofiler http://www.SkyandTelescope.com

Sky and Telescope - June 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - June 2016

Contents
Sky and Telescope - June 2016 - Cover1
Sky and Telescope - June 2016 - Cover2
Sky and Telescope - June 2016 - 1
Sky and Telescope - June 2016 - Contents
Sky and Telescope - June 2016 - 3
Sky and Telescope - June 2016 - A
Sky and Telescope - June 2016 - B
Sky and Telescope - June 2016 - 4
Sky and Telescope - June 2016 - 5
Sky and Telescope - June 2016 - 6
Sky and Telescope - June 2016 - 7
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