Saturn

Yesterday, we went to the observatory and managed to see Saturn. Not the big saturn, but the tini-tiny one.

I have been planning to take the girls to the observatory. It is open only on Friday nights from 7.50 to 10 pm. Rena has her swimming lesson on Fridays but since it's good Friday, her teacher also makes it a holiday. What a perfect time to see the stars.

We were excited from morning but then in the afternoon the weather turned bad. It's raining then it's cloudy. Our hearts sinked. How could we see the stars with those clouds around ? I was thinking of calling it off but in the end I decided we would just go and see what happened then.

As we went to the car, we saw a star twinkling in the dark. Hoorray... the cloud was clearing up. By the time we arrived in the observatory, the sky was clear. We could see so many stars. YES ! Next as I checked one counter, the lady said today there will no star gazing as the weather is not permitting. Oh no..... but we proceeded to the entrance, and surprise surprise, the guy handed us a paper showing the star constellation and we were shown the way to the observatory. YEEAAAH.....

After a not so long queue and a warning to the boys who tried to cut the queue... it's our turn to see what's inside the telescope. We were informed that we were going to see the Saturn. Ooh.... aahh..... what a surprise. We did not know what we were going to see and we were going to see The Saturn. What luck. I was as excited as the girls.

Peeking through the lense, my reaction was " HUH ? is that it ? that small ? are you kidding me? ". Well, I imagined we would see the beautiful Saturn, big and round with it's famous ring. The Saturn we saw through the telescope was as big as this letter o with the ring this big /. That's it. Well, I was impressed as how big my expectation was, and how small the reality was. I was silly to expect such a grand picture of the planet as shown in books. The lecturer in the 15 minutes class afterwards told us, the Saturn was so far away and we should not be disappointed with what we saw. He's spot on. I guess so many people come and expect to see those big beautiful pictures of the planet and the stars, just like me and after seeing it themselves they just say 'huh ?'. We were invited to come in July to see the Jupiter. Turns out, every planet and stars can be seen only in certain period as the position of the earth keeps on changing. We could not see the Venus yesterday because around this time it was located behind the sun. Hm... ok.. !?!?!?

Overall, it's a nice experience. We managed to see the Orion, we were shown the brightest star, we saw the 'texture' of the moon through the smaller telescopes and it was only one night after full moon.

As the boy (yes, a boy) told us that we could see the craters of the moon in a short while, I tried to explain to Dea and Rena that the moon is actually not as smooth as we see it now. It has it's own mountains, hills, volcanoes... and do you know what Dea said ? Oh... I know... it's like your face.... and I could do is laugh as she was 100% right. My face is as rough as the moon.

Well, we certainly will be back to the observatory. It's free, it's fun and we want to see the Jupiter. Hopefully by that time, my face is not as bad as the surface of the moon.