THE planet Saturn is in the news a lot at the moment, because a robotic space probe called Cassini, which has been orbiting that distant world since the summer of 2004, is approaching the end of its mission. In September the space probe will be deliberately sent plummeting into the planet's atmosphere, where it will burn up like a shooting star. This is to prevent it from crashing on any of Saturn's moons which might have life, and contaminating them.

If you want to see Saturn in the sky it's an easy naked eye object, glowing in the sky like a yellow-white star, but you have to get up in the wee small hours to spot it. A good time to look for it will be on the mornings of April 16-17, because before dawn on those mornings the Moon will be shining close to it which will help you find it: on the 16th the Moon lies to Saturn's upper right, and the next morning will have drifted down to its lower left.

Unfortunately, Saturn's beautiful rings are only visible through a telescope, but if you have a pair of binoculars they will really bring out Saturn's golden hue and also show you Mercury-sized Titan, its largest moon, as a tiny star close to Saturn itself.

Stuart Atkinson

Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal