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Saturn is a gas giant, so you'd need to define carefully what it means to be standing "on" it. If you were below the cloud tops, you'd not see any stars at all, regardless of the ring glow. If you were above the clouds, there is no scattering atmosphere, so you should see the stars just fine as long as you block your direct view of the rings... very much the way that the stars are visible from the day lit Moon if you block scattered light from the surface.hirumaui wrote:Does anyone here have links to what it would look like be standing on Saturn at midnight looking up? Would the glow from the rings make stars, planets invisible to the naked eye? After seeing the beautiful image of the night side of Saturn ( Cassini 2006), I would love to see a scientifically accurate image which has been created to illustrate this.
Compared to our own Moon Saturn's rings would:Chris Peterson wrote:Saturn is a gas giant, so you'd need to define carefully what it means to be standing "on" it. If you were below the cloud tops, you'd not see any stars at all, regardless of the ring glow.hirumaui wrote:Does anyone here have links to what it would look like be standing on Saturn at midnight looking up? Would the glow from the rings make stars, planets invisible to the naked eye? After seeing the beautiful image of the night side of Saturn ( Cassini 2006), I would love to see a scientifically accurate image which has been created to illustrate this.
If you were above the clouds, there is no scattering atmosphere, so you should see the stars just fine as long as you block your direct view of the rings... very much the way that the stars are visible from the day lit Moon if you block scattered light from the surface.
Not at all. If you were "laying" on your back, the glow off of Saturn would not affect your vision. To block the rings, you'd need do nothing more than hold your arm (or arms) up in the right position. Sure, the stars would be invisible where they were actually blocked by the rings (and by your arms). But the rest would show up just fine.neufer wrote:At an average distance of ~50,000 km Saturn's rings would be 24,000 times closer than the rings are to the earth making them ~22 magnitudes [= 5*log10(24,000)] brighter than these rings appear from earth. It would be like having hundreds of full moons in the sky. You would need very large panels to block both the direct view of the rings and their reflected glow off the surface of Saturn.
Chris Peterson wrote:Not at all. If you were "laying" on your back, the glow off of Saturn would not affect your vision. To block the rings, you'd need do nothing more than hold your arm (or arms) up in the right position. Sure, the stars would be invisible where they were actually blocked by the rings (and by your arms). But the rest would show up just fine.neufer wrote:
At an average distance of ~50,000 km Saturn's rings would be 24,000 times closer than the rings are to the earth making them ~22 magnitudes [= 5*log10(24,000)] brighter than these rings appear from earth. It would be like having hundreds of full moons in the sky. You would need very large panels to block both the direct view of the rings and their reflected glow off the surface of Saturn.
