pencil on paper, animated GIF, 2018-2023
Have the two minor stars been consumed after the manner of solar spots? Have they disappeared and suddenly fled? Has Saturn devoured his own sons? Or, was the appearance illusion and fraud with which the glasses have for so long a time deceived me and so many others who have observed it many times with me? […] I do not know what to say with certainty in a case so strange, unlooked for and novel. The shortness of the time, the phenomenon without parallel, the weakness of the reasoning power and the fear of erring render me greatly confused.
Galileo Galilei, 1612
This work pays homage to the period of uncertainty when astronomers began observing Saturn through a telescope. In June 2018, I saw Saturn through a telescope myself. Instruments have come a long way. Saturn in the eyepiece is tiny and delicate, like a precious miniature, its image trembling and quickly slipping out of sight, making the atmosphere and distance viscous, tangible, substances. Yet Saturn in the eyepiece is also undeniably there. Despite all the years of seeing images of Saturn in books, at school, or on the Internet, that June night, I saw Saturn for the first time. Not because I saw more of it, with better resolution, or because ‘seeing is believing’. Because seeing meant ‘being with’. Saturn and I shared a moment in the present – we were both there. I experience this even without a telescope when Saturn is just a pinprick.
Galileo Galilei was the first to look at Saturn through a telescope in 1610. The limits of the instruments meant he could not understand what he was seeing. He first interpreted Saturn as a triple star, describing its appearance as oOo. It took many astronomers nearly 50 years to figure Saturn’s rings. In 1659, Christiaan Huygens published his study on Saturn, including a diagram of key observations made by many astronomers, including Galileo’s. I realise the sequential nature of these drawings with an animation that recalls the unstable image of Saturn in the eyepiece.
This work developed as part of Uncalibrated, my PhD practice-led research. To view more of my works connected to the PhD click here.
