Saturn
The sky in the upper reaches of Saturn's atmosphere is probably blue, but the predominant color of its cloud decks suggests that it may be yellowish further down. Observations from spacecraft show that seasonal smog develops in Saturn's southern hemisphere at its perihelion due to its axial tilt. This could cause the sky to become yellowish at times. As the northern hemisphere is pointed towards the sun only at aphelion, the sky there would likely remain blue. The rings of Saturn are almost certainly visible from the upper reaches of its atmosphere. The rings are so thin that from a position on Saturn's equator, they would be almost invisible. From anywhere else on the planet, they could be seen as a spectacular arc stretching across half the celestial hemisphere.
Saturn's moons would not look particularly impressive in its sky, as most are fairly small, and the largest are a long way from the planet. Even Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, appears only half the size of Earth's moon, and only has a magnitude of –7.02 (Enceladus, despite being smaller, has a high albedo and is brighter than Titan, at magnitude −7.59). Here are the approximate angular diameters of the main moons (for comparison, Earth's moon has an angular diameter of 31'): Mimas: 7–11', Enceladus: 7–9', Tethys: 12–15', Dione: 10–12', Rhea: 8–11', Titan: 14–15', Iapetus: 1'. Most of the inner moons would appear as starlike points, with the exception of Janus, which would appear 7 arcseconds across at its zenith.
Saturn has a southern polar star, δ Octantis, a magnitude 4.3 star. It is much fainter than Earth's Polaris (α Ursae Minoris).
Read more about this topic: Extraterrestrial Skies
Famous quotes containing the word saturn:
“Test of the poet is knowledge of love,
For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove;
Never was poet, of late or of yore,
Who was not tremulous with love-lore.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The forehead and the little ears
Have gone where Saturn keeps the years;
The breast where roses could not live
Has done with rising and with falling.”
—Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)