Saturday, July 16, 2011

Is there a planetarium that can simulate Saturn's night sky, rings and all?

I know Saturn is a gas giant so you probably couldn't see anything if you were standing on the surface (assuming you could survive the gravity). But, for the sake of argument and gee-whiz sci-fi wonder... if Saturn had a solid surface, what would it be like to look up at the night sky? Obviously the rings would be the most prominent feature. Parts of the rings are translucent while others are very dense, so that would look cool at night. Backlit rings would be even cooler (Google image search “Saturn eclipse”!) They'd be very very bright and take up a large chunk of the night sky, and probably light up everything on Saturn to such an extent that you wouldn't need artificial lighting. In fact, I predict the rings would be so bright at night that your pupils would contract so much that you wouldn't see any stars (same reason there are no stars in NASA photos of the moon landings). Anyway, is there some place I can go to see an *accurate* portrayal Saturn's night sky?

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