"R LYHVIEVW GSV SRTSVHG KOZMVG (GLYV) GSIVV-YLWRVW."
 

If you can solve this cryptogram, you will have solved one that is 389 years old. It was written by Galileo Galilei and referred to what he thought he saw when he first looked at Saturn with a telescope.

Saturn was known by the ancient Babylonians, but it was not until 1610 when Galileo turned his telescope to the planet that the glorious rings became known. Galileo wasn't at all sure what he had discovered, but whatever it was, he wanted credit for it. Since he also did not want to be ridiculed if he was wrong about what he thought he saw, he wrote a note to himself in the form of an anagram.

November sixth marks the day when Saturn reaches opposition.

Opposition occurs when a planet beyond the Earth is opposite the Sun with the Earth in between, the three bodies forming a straight line. It's a great time to see the ringed planet and to learn a bit more about this fascinating world. Saturn is perhaps the most fascinating place in the solar system, and the only planet that could float!

Being the second largest planet in the solar system, Saturn is easy to spot. Even a small telescope will show the rings of Saturn, but it was not until the Voyager spacecraft visited Saturn in 1979 that we realized how complex a system the rings were. It had once been thought that the rings were solid, and indeed through most telescopes they do. What they actually are however, is billions of icy chunks forming over 1000 ringlets around Saturn.

The origin of Saturn's rings is uncertain. One theory is that they are debris left over from the planet's formation, another is that they are the remains of one or more small moons which were torn apart from orbiting too close to the giant planet. They could even be formed more recently, within the last 100 million years by a small moon shattered by an incoming comet. Further studies will need to be made to determine their origins.

Though Saturn may be best known for its rings, there are other interesting things about the planet and its surrounding moons. Saturn may be the second largest planet in the solar system, but it holds the record for least dense. Water has a density of 1.0 grams per centimeter cubed. Saturn has a density of 0.69 grams per centimeter cubed. This means that if you could somehow obtain a huge chunk of the ringed planet, and bring it back to Earth, it would float in your swimming pool!

Saturn is 10 times farther from the Sun than the Earth. It is therefore, a cold world, with temperatures averaging -292 degrees F. In spite of its size, Saturn rotates very rapidly. A day on Saturn would only be 10 hours 14 minutes! But, to make up for that, it takes 29.5 earth-years for Saturn to make one trip around the Sun!

Though Saturn has over 18 moons, there is one in particular which has captured the attention of scientists, Titan. Titan is 48 percent larger than the Earth's moon, but the thing which interests scientists most is that Titan has a nitrogen rich atmosphere. Titan is shrouded by clouds and astronomers can only speculate that beneath them lie an ocean of liquid methane and ethane. These conditions make it possible that some primitive life could exist on this moon.

In response to the many questions raised about Saturn and its moons, NASA launched the Cassinni spacecraft on October 15, 1997. The spacecraft was to get to Saturn by way of going first the opposite direction, toward Venus! This was so that it could get a gravity assist by swinging first around Venus and then around the Earth. This increased Cassinni's speed many fold. Cassinni is scheduled to arrive at Saturn in 2004. So far, the spacecraft is in excellent health. While Cassini takes detailed pictures and readings of Saturn, it also carries a small probe, called Huygens which will be sent to explore Titan. The probe was supplied by the European Space Agency. The probe will descend into Titan's atmosphere and we may at last know what lies beneath the clouds.

Even if we cannot personally go to explore Saturn, it is still a beautiful sight to behold. You can find Saturn near Jupiter in the eastern sky after dark. Jupiter is brighter and slightly higher. And the solution to our cryptogram?Of course the original was written in Italian, but it translates "I have observed the highest planet (to be) three-bodied." In such a small crude telescope, Galileo was not sure whether he was observing rings or 2 bodies orbiting Saturn because the image was blurred.