See Saturn's rings Tuesday night as it makes closest pass by Earth

Cloud-free skies are expected on Tuesday night across much of the interior West, southern Plains and Northeast, leading to uninterrupted viewing.

Saturn will be above the horizon all night long, rising in the southeast around sunset and slowly gliding across the sky before setting in the southwest around dawn.

No special equipment is needed to see the planet as it is bright enough to see with the unaided eye, but a telescope is required to be able to see the planet's famous rings. These rings are made up of pieces of ice, dust and debris orbiting the planet.

Jupiter just reached opposition in June and is still bright in the sky most of the night, out-shining all of the stars and even Saturn.

Once you have located Jupiter in the southern sky, it should be easier to spot Saturn. The two planets are not right next to each other, but Saturn should be off to the left of Jupiter.

Beautiful photos.

I was just telling someone the other day that one of the coolest things was seeing Saturn’s rings “in person” through a small telescope. The local astronomy club came to the grade school one night for all the kids.

It really was something to see them for real, rather than from a photograph.

From the web:

In 1610, the year after Galileo Galilei turned a telescope to the sky, Galileo became the first person to observe Saturn’s rings, though he could not see them well enough to discern their true nature.

In 1655, Christiaan Huygens was the first person to describe them as a disk surrounding Saturn.

OK...guess I should have told you I'm very familiar with both photography and astronomy, I've been a photographer for over 30 years, into astronomy for 10 years or so. So I know what things like ISO mean, could have saved you some explaining. No way I could afford a tracker, I've heard of those but had no idea one was that costly. Also knew about stacking software, but can't get a decent enough shot to make it worth tinkering around with. I've seen some killer macro shots of insects done with stacking. Star shots are more difficult, mostly because tracking is not an option. If I had that available, it would make a big difference.

I've been using a standard tripod, Pentax K30 and either 50mm f1.4 and f1.7 lenses, or 28mm f2.8. Camera has a 12 second timer, I use that to eliminate vibrations from handling it. Also have a remote shutter trigger I can use, normally don't need it. Handy for getting hummingbird shots though, preset the focus and stand a few feet away.

I've tried everything except extremes, my camera does a very good job of limiting noise up to ISO1600, above that it gets iffy, but 3200 at night is acceptable and the 50mm lens can open up to f2 and still do an excellent job. Wide open it's not easy to focus and depth of field is long gone. Then again with star shots, depth of field is not a major issue... biggest problem is most lenses are not sharp wide open as they can be at smaller apertures. I use all manual lenses, the only auto focus I have is the "kit" lens that came with the camera.

I've done a few, but with my lenses, I think it was 5 seconds started to show star trails. At 4 seconds, black dark background and fairly decent star exposure, but nothing like the Milky Way showing like you got. I can't remember the exact settings I used, and I guess my star pictures are on the external hard drive, can't find them, only a few moon shots. Those turn out nice, but the moon is a different story, It's a lot brighter, I can get a good shot at ISO100, f8, 1/500 handheld with a 200mm lens (ancient Vivitar M42 screw mount job) That lens finally went belly up, I'm using a 135mm right now, haven't found another 200mm that will match the old one. I got one 3 years ago, not even close to the sharp pictures the original one got, exact same model lens.

Here's one of the moon shots, 200mm f4 M42 lens, ISO100, 1/500, f8, hand held, taken in June, 2013. I've taken a bunch of these, including several at 1/4 and 3/4 moon. I think a few at half too but those are probably also on the external hard drive. I put them on it because with over 100,000 pictures from the previous camera, Pentax K-x, and so far over 80,000 with this one, I would have run out of hard drive space long ago...So I just keep a portion of the best shots on the computer, the majority are on the external drive.

I had a boatload on Flickr, they decided to limit the number of pictures, and since I had too many I can't even get into my account to cull a few hundred...which reminds me I still need to go find out how to delete the whole account.

Thanks for the info, you brought up some points I had forgotten, since I don't have the equipment to do that I haven't even thought about it in a while. Stacking might be an option but it's not a major photography goal for me, I'm more into nature shots. I had completely forgotten about the tracking setup for a tripod...I've used telescopes with tracking. Mine is a 6 inch Dobson mount, no tracking available so pictures are out. I do a lot of birds, flowers and insects, wildlife whenever I can, and macro shots if I can get an insect or flower to sit still for a couple of minutes. I had a great location for some sunset shots in Louisiana, so far I haven't found anywhere as good around here. Nothing wide open enough unless I take a 30 minute drive. Now and then I'll set up a still life or two.

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