Scott's Fly Fishing and Astronomy Site

September 2001 Saturn Grazing

Observing Information:

Light ground fog in places, Light dew

2x TeleVue Big-Barlow stacked the 13 mm Nagler and the 11 mm University Optics for high power views.

Observing Narrative:

Bob Bond, his wife Annick, Tom Field and I were able to see the complete grazing of Saturn from the parking lot of the Vader, Washington elementary school. The janitor wasn't interested in joining us, although he did take a peak right at the beginning of the graze.

Bob and Tom secured the viewing spot and had a head start on me setting up. Tom showed me how close Saturn was to the Moon (it was just above the bright side of the terminator line (about 1.5 times the diameter of the planet and rings). So, I put the Dob setup into HIGH GEAR! I now have a new record setup for my Dob (11 minutes with collimating).

We were all struggling to get setup right up to the beginning of the graze. Luckily, we all were successful. The rings began to disappear behind the moon just beyond the terminator line. The planet slowly sunk behind the barely visible dark edge of the Moon. Saturn sunk no more than half of the planet's diameter. Perfect placement for observing! Oh by the way, of course in the rush to setup, no one got an accurate start time for the graze, but I'm fairly confident that contact first occurred about 5:30 a.m. (September 10, 2001).

Saturn continued to skim along the edge of the moon. Filters were needed for the first few minutes due to the closeness to the bright Moon. We could not confirm any lunar mountains breaking the smooth line of the Moon's surface as silhouetted against Saturn. It was simply stunningly beautiful. The open areas between Saturn and the rings were covered partly, and one side actually dipped below the surface of the Moon. Saturn was halved from ring end to ring end "length-wise" by this graze.

After six or seven minutes filters were not necessary as Saturn distanced itself from the bright side of the terminator line. High power (145x or more) was not very crisp since my mirror had not yet cooled to the air's temperature. However, the air was mostly clear and transparent enough to make it nice for the viewing. Low power (54x) using a 35 mm Panoptic showed the entire Moon and a very nice "half" of Saturn. The view was surreal and something I won't soon forget. Tom made the comment that it looked like something out of a science fiction movie!

Saturn began to pull away from the Moon and I noticed that the rings away from the terminator line were getting larger. Soon, the disk of Saturn began to get larger. The disk fully emerged and just the edge of the rings were slightly flattened on the north end of the planet. We all agreed that contact was complete at 5:46 a.m. Many memories were made in those 16 minutes or so.

Wait, the show wasn't over yet. One of Saturn's bright moon's (Titan) popped out from behind the Moon at 5:51 a.m. This was on the other side of Saturn from the terminator line and "below" (closer to the Moon). A few minutes later, just before 6:00 a.m. a second much dimmer moon appeared. This moon was on the terminator side of Saturn again just below (and slightly closer than the brighter moon that showed itself earlier). I was almost sure (80% certain) that I saw the dimmer moon blink out at least once and perhaps twice for just a few seconds. It could have been the air, seeing, or a surface feature that blocked the moon's light. Again, we could not verify any surface features against the disk of Saturn.