Planetarium show explores Saturn

This month’s Planetarium show — the final show of the school year — was titled “Saturn and the Summer Sky,” and took a long look at the ringed planet and what our night sky should look like this summer.

Pat Hanrahan, Planetarium director, started off with a slide show about Saturn, which has just achieved opposition (being most visible from Earth, in the Eastern night sky opposite the setting sun), and its moons.

Saturn is a massive gas giant and is much like Jupiter. The only reason it doesn’t look like Jupiter is because Saturn is farther away from the sun, making it colder and giving it an ammonium-compound cloud atmosphere we can’t see through. “That’s what gives it (Saturn) that nice butterscotch look,” Hanrahan said.

Saturn’s rings are made of ice. The going theory is that millions of years ago, an ice moon drifted too close to Saturn, got torn apart and the rings were all that was left. Because the rings are only about 20 or so feet tall, the rings virtually disappear when we on Earth look at them head-on.

Saturn is located within the constellation of Libra and has over 60 moons, 40 of which are named. According to Hanrahan, the planet has only eight moons, “because I can only see eight,” he quipped.

Because Saturn is made almost completely of hydrogen, it is the lightest planet in our solar system. Hanrahan joked that, “if you could find a bathtub big enough, Saturn would float in it.”

Being a gas giant, Saturn is constantly storming underneath that ammonium cloud. It is the stormiest planet in the Solar System. There is a storm on the hexagon-shaped northern pole, called the Northern Vortex, that is essentially a giant hurricane. Winds in these hurricanes can reach 350 miles an hour.

Saturn’s moon, Titan, is one of the largest moons in the solar system, being one and-a-half times the diameter of Earth’s moon. Its entire surface is solid, because it is so cold. In an expedition to Titan, NASA discovered that the “lake” that the lander crashed into was made completely of liquid methane.

Another one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, is squeezing water out into space. The water instantly turns to ice and it is used to sustain Saturn’s rings. Hanrahan believes we should divert a space mission to Enceladus to observe this process more thoroughly.

This summer, Saturn, Mars and even Jupiter will be viewable for a while, in the night sky.

This being the final planetarium show of the year, Hanrahan was excited to end with his favorite planet, Saturn.

The year was a bit difficult starting out for the planetarium, because of delays during the installation of a new digital lights system, but Hanrahan believes it went well. “There have been some bugs and glitches, but I try to make it so it doesn’t disrupt the shows,” he said.

Next year’s shows should proceed on time, making for what looks to be a solid schedule, he said.