Saturn Spectacular Leaves Astronomers in a Heavenly State

Saturn sailed across the heavens with a diamond in its rings Monday morning, dazzling mortals on a distant planet.

Witnessing the event were thousands of amateur and professional astronomers who traveled to the high country throughout the Southwest so they could take part in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

And Saturn, one of the most popular objects in the sky because of its spectacular rings, did not let them down.

Standing out in brilliant contrast against a black, moonless sky, the second-largest planet in the solar system passed in front of a bright star late Sunday night and early Monday morning. That happens so rarely that it drew the undivided attention of many of the largest telescopes in the West, from Chile to Arizona to Hawaii to California.

Saturn Owned the Skies

The event gave scientists a chance to study the size and nature of Saturn, and its rings and many moons, but it was far more than that. From the moment shortly before midnight that the star first flickered and dipped behind the outer ring to the time it emerged more than three hours later from the other side, Saturn owned the skies.

“That’s pretty bloody spectacular,” sighed Leif Robinson, editor of Sky and Telescope Magazine, who talked to the fledgling Mt. Wilson Institute about using the 60-inch telescope at the Mt. Wilson Observatory to study the event. A handful of scientists and a few guests crouched on their hands and knees on the observatory’s concrete floor to watch the entire drama on a small television monitor hooked up to the historic scope.

Much of the time the crowd was quiet, almost reverent, but every time the star blazed through a hole in the rings it brought cheers and applause from astronomers who are more accustomed to fighting sleep than controlling their exuberance during long, nighttime stints at the telescope.

“You could measure the size of the rings by the sound level in this room,” observed astronomer Art Vaughan of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Vaughan is chairman of the board of the Mt. Wilson Institute and one of the prime movers in the drive to save the historic observatory from the scrap heap.

Major Role in Astronomy

For nearly a century the Mt. Wilson Observatory played a major role in astronomy, but a few years ago the Carnegie Institution shocked the scientific world by announcing that the institute would concentrate its limited resources on its more modern observatory in Chile, and that would force it to close Mt. Wilson.

But scientists and enthusiasts like Vaughan rose up en masse to challenge that move, giving birth to the Mt. Wilson Institute, a grass-roots organization that is dedicated to preserving the observatory. Last Jan. 5, the Carnegie Institution turned over the entire observatory to the Mt. Wilson Institute, and the old facility began a new life.

The institute plans to turn the observatory into a major educational facility, and Vaughan noted that along the way it would be nice if it could fill in a few gaps left by the upstart observatories that have come along to take its place.

That is exactly what it did Monday morning.

Just a few days ago Robinson, whose magazine enjoys the respect of professional as well as amateur astronomers, was trying to find some way to capture the moment for his readers when he thought of Mt. Wilson. At first, Robinson said Monday night, he thought he would just ask permission to attach a small telescope to a

drive mechanism at the observatory, giving him a chance to photograph the event.

But when he approached the institute, he got a surprise.

A team of scientists from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has been using the 60-inch telescope to study other stars to see if they have sunspots like the sun (they do, it turns out) and they were willing to turn the instrument toward Saturn for its rendezvous with a star known as 28 Sagittarii.

“I was amazed by how quickly this all came together,” Robinson said. “In a matter of a day or two we knew we had a telescope.”

Others quickly came aboard with instruments needed to study the eclipse, which astronomers call an “occultation,” and by Sunday night the only thing lacking was a drum roll.

“There it goes,” astronomer Jim Frazer of the Harvard Smithsonian yelled as the star edged up to the outer ring.

The rings of Saturn have long fascinated celestial observers because they create one of the most spectacular views in the sky.

The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft took much of the mystery out of the rings when they confirmed earlier evidence that the rings were not solid. Their contents range from gas and dust particles to the second largest moon in the solar system, but they also have gaps and even intermittent rings that are largely void of matter.

Knowing that, the scientists at Mt. Wilson expected the star to disappear behind the rings almost immediately, but it turned out to be rather reluctant to leave the stage.

“Bye, bye, starlight,” Frazer said as the star first dipped behind the outer ring.

But a second later it blazed brightly again, and the old dome housing the telescope reverberated with shouts and applause.

“Holy mackerel, it’s still there,” Robinson said. “This is more fun than a pinball machine.”

“It’s more fun than Christmas,” added Lyndine McAfee, executive director of the Mt. Wilson Institute.

And so it went, throughout the evening.

Meanwhile, other scientists at other observatories in Arizona, California, Hawaii and Chile were compiling data on the event. Videotapes from Mt. Wilson will be sent to the University of Arizona as part of that effort.

Unchanged by it all was Saturn, second in mass among the planets only to Jupiter, an ethereal vision that does not look real as it moves across the sky, cloaked in rings of gold.

But Sunday night and Monday morning, it blocked out the rays from a distant star, proving that it is, indeed, real.