Daily Mail travel section Saturday

Menae wrote:
Saturday;s DM said "At Ayers rock in Australia,
the sky's so dark that you can see the rings of
Saturn, or it's satellites". Is that possible?

The darkness of the sky has little to do with being able to see details
on the brighter (as viewed from Earth) planets themselves. That's simply
because they're bright enough that a bit of light pollution doesn't wash
them out. You can still see the rings of Saturn from the centre of a
large city, using the same binoculars or telescope which would enable
you to see them from Ayers rock. Dark skies are most useful for viewing
fainter objects like galaxies and nebulae, where the constast against
the sky is already low.

The human eye simply doesn't have the reolution to make out the rings of
Saturn unaided. A few people report seeing slight elongation, but I've
never heard a convincing report of actually resolving the rings with the
naked eye.

The satellites of Saturn are fairly dim, so dark skies do indeed help to
see them.

Clear skies (no mist, smoke, fog, smog, cloud etc.) and steady skies
(the atmosphere not making the image dance about too much) do help, and
perhaps Ayers rock often has good skies in those terms too. But clear
and steady are distinct from dark.


Tim