Saturn Return 2002

In his 'The Face of the Moon' written after the eclipse of AD75, Plutarch recorded a festival among the Celts every thirty-years when Cronus (Saturn) entered the sign of Taurus: this is the time of the Celtic 30 year Age, also recorded by Pliny the Elder, in his 'Natural History', written from AD52-79. Saturn's thirty-year cycle in the skies most recently brought it back to the constellation of Taurus in 2002, enabling us to mark the current cycle.

To mark this event, presented here are some images of this astronomical event.

Here is a wonderful photo of Saturn entering Taurus and in close proximity to Aldebaran taken on January 18, 2002 - two millennia after Plutarch recorded the thirty-year Celtic festival, we can look to the skies to see what our ancient Celtic forebears saw!

Saturn is the bright planet, top left, and Aldebaran is the bright star lower left, and the Pleiades cluster is to the right.

Harvard University Gazette in its April 18, 2002 issue also marked the event. There, an image is presented showing the evening sky in April 2002. Later that year in June, the rise of the constellation Taurus saw the planets rising with Aldebaran and the Pleiades star cluster, shown in the intro page for The Celtic Calendar 2007 : in ancient times, this occurred in May, from which the Beltaine festival arose in post-Romanisation times.

[Credit and Copyright belong to Joe Orman: source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020118.html]

The NASA website "Breathtaking Saturn", at: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/13dec_saturn.htm reported:

December 13, 2002: Thirty years ago, Earth and Saturn had an extraordinary close encounter. The ringed planet was only 1.2 billion km from Earth--about as close as it can get--and its rings were tipped toward us. The view through a telescope was simply breathtaking. Next week it's going to happen again. "On Dec. 17th, Saturn and Earth will be unusually close together--about the same as thirty years ago," says NASA astronomer Mitzi Adams.

Above: Photographer Ed Grafton captured this image of Saturn from Houston, Texas, on Dec. 11, 2002. He used a 14-inch telescope and a CCD camera.

May 20, 2002 using the Gregorian Calendar of today, is the first day of Samon using the ancient Celtic calendar system. This date is therefore able to be identified as the beginning of a new Celtic thirty year Age.