Saturn

“ Thus once more we plunged into space—infinite space,—dark, airless ether, with the myriads of glittering stars far off on every side. Again we got upon a meteor ring, and swept on through space toward the mighty system of the Ringed World. The journey was long— days and weeks and months, by your earth-measurement of time, passed on this weary voyage. Still Saturn seemed little more than a great star in space, with its mighty rings and its eight moons slowly growing more and more distinct. ”

“ In one sense it is, and Saturn is more than another world—than ours or Earth; it is another system. His rings and his moons mark a complete system, distinct from the others, though chained to the distant sun by the power of gravitation. May it not be that solar influences, so potent with us, and still energetic in the Earth and Mars, here are weak, and that the planet himself has a force,—an independent existence distinct from the sun? ”

“ The great splendour of Venus is altogether out of comparison with that of Saturn, while the brilliant crescent of the evening star is infinitely more pleasing than any telescopic view of the globe of Saturn. Yet even while we admit all this to the fullest extent, it does not invalidate the claim of Saturn to be one of the most supremely beautiful and interesting objects in the heavens. ”

“ Be that as it may, after many windings and turnings, he arrived at the planet Saturn; and, accustomed as he was to the sight of novelties, he could not for his life repress a supercilious and conceited smile, which often escapes the wisest philosopher, when he perceived the smallness of that globe, and the diminutive size of its inhabitants; for really Saturn is but about nine hundred times larger than this our earth, and the people of that country mere dwarfs, about a thousand fathoms high. ”

“ The shadows do not travel in the same apparent paths as the satellites themselves across the disc, but (in an inverting telescope) below from August to January, and above from February to July.
We come now to the most charming telescopic object in the heavens—the planet Saturn. Inferior only to Jupiter in mass and volume, this planet surpasses him in the magnificence of his system. Seen in a telescope of adequate power, Saturn is an object of surpassing loveliness. He must be an unimaginative man who can see Saturn for the first time in such a telescope, without a feeling of awe and amazement. ”

“ But Saturn possesses an interest for a far more numerous class of persons than those who are specially devoted to astronomy. It is of interest, it must be of interest, to every cultivated person who has the slightest love for nature. A lover of the picturesque cannot behold Saturn in a telescope without feelings of the liveliest emotion; while, if his reading and reflection have previously rendered him aware of the [Pg 293] colossal magnitude of the object at which he is looking, he will be constrained to admit that no more remarkable spectacle is presented in the whole of nature. ”

“ Saturn could not stem
The loosened torrents of long-pent defeat;
He, with his hosts, was but as drift thereon,
Borne wildly down the whelmed and reeling world.
Hurling like slanted rain, the violet levin
Fell over that flight of Titans, and behind,
In striding menace, all-victorious Jove
Loomed like some craggy cloud with thunders crowned
And footed with the winds. In that defeat,
With Jove's pursuit deepened and manifold,
Few found escape unscathed, and some went down
Like senile suns that grapple with the dark,
And reel in flame tremendous, and are still. ”

“ If at any time it should disperse, it would either fall into fragments upon the surface of Saturn, or the fragments, mutually coalescing, would form additional satellites to circle round the planet in its path.
To an observer stationed on the planet, between the extremes of lat. 45° on either side of the equator, these wonderful rings would present various strange phenomena. Sometimes they would appear as an illuminated arch, with the shadow of Saturn passing over it like the hour-hand over a dial; at other times they would be like a semi-aureole of light. ”

“ Kearny seized me by an arm and pointed a tragic forefinger at a rather brilliant star that shone steadily about thirty degrees above the horizon.
“‘That’s Saturn,’ said he, ‘the star that presides over bad luck and evil and disappointment and nothing doing and trouble. I was born under that star. Every move I make, up bobs Saturn and blocks it. He’s the hoodoo planet of the heavens. ”

“ Saturn is the Greater Infortune of the old system of astrology, and is by universal experience acknowledged to be the most potent, evil, and malignant of all the planets. Those born under him are of dark and pale complexion, with small, black, leering eyes, thick lips and nostrils, large ears, thin face, lowering looks, cloudy aspect, and seemingly melancholy and unhappy; and though they have broad shoulders, they have but short lips and a thin beard, [Pg 31] They are in character austere and reserved, covetous, laborious, and revengeful; constant in friendship, and good haters. ”

“ Truly, with the constant rising and setting of the satellites, some with bright discs at their full, others like silver crescents, in quadrature, as well as by the encircling rings, the aspect of the heavens from the surface of Saturn must be as impressive as it is gorgeous. ”

“ Sometimes for days together a large part of Saturn must suffer eclipse beneath the encircling rings, but at other times, at night, when the rings are clear of the planet's body, so that the light is not cut off from them, they must appear as radiant arches of glory spanning the sky. ”

“ As the Sun shines half a year on the north pole of our earth, then disappears to it, and shines as long on the south pole; so, during one half of Saturn’s year the Sun shines on the north side of his ring, then disappears to it, and shines as long on it’s south side. When the Earth’s Axis inclines neither to nor from the Sun, but sidewise to him, he instantly ceases to shine on one pole, and begins to enlighten the other; and when Saturn’s Ring inclines neither to nor from the Sun, but sidewise to him, he ceases to shine on the one side of it, and begins to shine upon the other. ”

“ By others Saturn is held to be the sun and ripener of the harvests; by others, again, the storm-god, who swallows the clouds, whose sickle is the rainbow, and whose blood is the lightning; by others still Saturn is regarded as the sky, which swallows and reproduces the stars, and whose sickle is the crescent moon. ”

“ Already there have been surprises and puzzles that paint a completely new picture of Saturn and its neighborhood, including the discovery of three new moons, startling information about Saturn’s rings, and observation of the unexpectedly complex structure of Saturn’s atmosphere and that of its largest moon, Titan. It will take years for scientists to assimilate completely the information which is cascading down from Voyager. What more will this marvel of technology have to tell us before it departs the solar system to travel endlessly among the stars? ”

“ But then there is no lack of blanket in the House of Saturn, for there is a thick atmosphere to keep the warmth in the old gentleman's body and to lengthen the Saturnian twilights. As for the abatement of light, we know how much light yet remains to us when less than a ninetieth part of the sun escapes eclipse. We see in its brightness, as a star, though a pale one, the reflection of the sunshine Saturn gets, which if but a ninetieth part of our share, yet leaves the sun of Saturn able to give five hundred and sixty times more light than our own brightest moonshine. ”

“ But with Saturn the case is different. His distance at successive returns to our midnight skies is subject to moderate changes only. Yet his brilliancy varies in a remarkable manner. We now know that those changes are due to the opening and closing of that marvellous system of rings which renders this planet the most beautiful of all the objects of telescopic observation which the heavens present to us. When the edge of the rings is turned towards the earth, we see only the most delicate thread of light on either side of the planet's disc. ”

“ Saturn is the most remote of all the planets that the ancient peoples knew anything about. These anciently known planets are sometimes called the lucid or naked-eye planets—five in number: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Saturn shines as a first-magnitude star, with a steady straw-colored light, and is at a distance of about 800 million miles from the earth when best seen. Saturn travels completely round the sun in a little short of thirty years, and the telescope, when turned to Saturn, reveals a unique and astonishing object ”

“ I ventured more than ten years ago, in the preface to my treatise upon the planet Saturn, to suggest the possibility 'that in the variations perceptibly proceeding in the Saturnian ring-system a key may one day be found to the law of development under which the solar system has reached its present condition.' This suggestion seems to me strikingly confirmed by the recent discoveries. The planet Saturn and its appendages, always interesting to astronomers, are found more than ever worthy of close investigation and scrutiny. ”

“ And if we have to regard the planets as merely parts of the same great spectacle of nature, we shall not the less regard them with an admiration which ministers to pious awe. Even merely as [Pg 263] a spectacle, Saturn made visible in his real shape, only by a vast exertion of human skill, yet shining like a star, in form so curiously complex, symmetrical and seemingly artificial, will never cease to be an object of the ardent and contemplative gaze of all who catch a sight of him. ”

“ And though Saturn were older than his Brother Jupiter, yet was he fain to content himself with the command of the Earth, whilst Jupiter took upon him that of Heaven, Neptune that of the Sea, and Pluto the Dominion of Hell. Which Division will not at all seem strange to those that understand Nature, who find that each Brothers lot was very correspondent and comporting with their nature. The Nature of Saturn much resembles the Earth, and he makes all things that he takes to him like the Earth ”

“ It is tempting to linger still longer over this beautiful system, to speculate on the appearance which the ring would present to an inhabitant of Saturn, to conjecture whether it is to be regarded as a permanent feature of our system in the same way as we attribute permanence to our moon or to the satellites of Jupiter. Looked at from every point of view, the question is full of interest, and it provides occupation abundant for the labours of every type of astronomer. ”

“ For considering the length of Saturn’s year, which is almost equal to thirty of ours, what a dreadful condition must the inhabitants of his Polar regions be in, if they be half of that time deprived of the light and heat of the Sun? ”

“ Seen with the naked eye, Saturn shines in the night like a star of the first magnitude, whose dull, soft whiteness is, however, far from attaining the brilliancy of Venus or Jupiter, although it sometimes approaches Mars in brightness. Saturn hardly ever exhibits the phenomenon of scintillation, or twinkling, a peculiarity which makes it easily distinguishable among the stars and planets of the heavens.
The synodical period of Saturn occupies 1 year and 13 days, so that every 378 days, on an average, this planet holds the same position in the sky relatively to the Sun and the Earth. ”

“ Saturn, which is next to Jupiter in order of distance from the Sun, while not the largest, is certainly the most beautiful and interesting of all the planets, with his grand and unique system of rings, and his eight satellites, which, like faithful servants, attend the planet's interminable journey through space. ”

“ Do indeed the astrologers rightly ascribe to Saturn the guardianship of miners, who, accustomed to spend their lives, like moles, underground, seldom breathe the free air under the open sky? Although the darkness here is rather more supportable than in Saturn, because the sun, which appears there only as large as Venus appears to us on the earth, continually casts its rays through the spaces between the different orbs in such a way that those inhabitants who are situated on one orb are covered by the other as by a ceiling ”

“ Saturn is unique amongst the planets in that its globe is encircled by a series of concentric rings, which lie in the plane of its equator, and consist, according to present theories, of vast throngs of minute bodies revolving about the planet, like so many satellites, in closely parallel orbits. The globe of Saturn, like that of Jupiter, is surrounded by cloudy belts parallel to its equator. ”

“ You (has he said a hundred times to one) have Saturn in an Angle, in his House, and Retrograde; you cannot fail, one of these days, of being as Melancholy as a Sage ought to be: for the wisest of all men (as we know in the Cabal) had, as you have, Jupiter in the Ascendant. And yet, it was never observed, that he ever so much as once laughed, in all his life time, so powerful was his Saturn in him, though it was certainly weaker than yours. ”

“ Saturn, in its great motion round the luminary, is, of course, controlled by the sun, yet the system attached to Saturn is so close to that globe as to be attracted by the sun in a manner which need not here be distinguished from the solar attraction on Saturn itself. ”

“ For beauty of natural scenery, Saturn surpasses all the Solar System. Its air is of a different composition from ours, and its sky puts on various tints as the day passes, which is a little over ten hours of our time, but it takes nearly thirty of our years to make one on Saturn. ”