Best Planet of 2003

Everyone else is doing their retrospectives of 2003, so why shouldn't we? I thought a poll might get people thinking back on their good and bad observing experiences of last year. The poll here concerns voting for the best performance by a planet in a major role!

The nominations are:

Saturn.
The ringed planet put in a spectacular last winter when it crept through Taurus right up to the Crab nebula, showing us what the supernova of the 11th century would have looked like, as well as providing incredible depth of field. The rings have been wide open too, showing off the beauty of this planet for all viewers.

Jupiter.
This great planet also dallied with a Messier object last winter when it brushed up against M44, the Beehive cluster in Cancer. It came close enough that the Gallilean moons looked like little outriders of the open cluster.

Mercury.
Who can forget the joy of that morning last May when we watched this little black dot crawl across the Sun? Didn’t Mercury look darker than those sunspots, more definite? And didn’t it make us dream of next June and the show we can expect from Venus?

Mars.
Mars certainly looked good and got a huge amount of coverage in the magazines, but Mars gave us more than something nice to look at. Mars did more to popularise astronomy this year than anything has in quite a while. While we were admiring it, it was making us look good!

Have fun!

Got a look at Saturn through a 30Cm Newtonian with a 2.6M focal length while I was at the Urania public observatory in Antwerp with my Uncle (who works there as a volunteer). Magnified 300X the image was still perfectly chrisp and sharp and bloody huge!

The cloud bands were as clear as those on Jupiter almost and the wide open rings were simply stunning with structures clearly visible withing them. THe image was so clear that the Casini division could have been re-named te Casini rift it was so wide and clear.

After seeing that I just had to vote for Saturn!

Bart.

The winner for best performance by a major planet in a starring role for 2003 goes to (drumroll) ...

Mars! (rapturous applause)

It seems that the stunning views presented by the red planet last August, as well as the recent media exposure given by the missions to Mars allowed the bringer of war to pip its nearest rival, Saturn, to the post!