After Dark in Allenspark	by Leslie Young
Saturn is back in eastern sky in the early evening, hanging out 14 degrees above Orion's left shoulder. Depending on how low your Eastern horizon is, you may spot Saturn when it rises (at 8:00 on Nov 1), when it reaches 30 degrees altitude (10:45 on Nov 1), or when it reaches its highest altitude of 72 deg above the Southern horizon (at 3:20 AM on Nov 1). Later in the month, subtract half an hour from these times for each week.
In November, December, and January, Saturn is up for most of the night, which is good for astromomers. These next few winters are important for studying Saturn, because the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft will arrive at Saturn in July of 2004, will orbit Saturn for four years, and will drop a probe into the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's large moon. 
Magnetic fields, the amount of dust, and the density and speeds of ions and electrons can only be measured when you're actually in the environment you're trying to measure-strictly a job for spacecraft, and Cassini is carrying a half dozen of these "direct sensing" instruments. Even for its half-dozen "remote sensing" instruments (like cameras), Cassini can get much finer spatial detail than we can get from the ground just because it is so close to Saturn. 
On the other hand, ground based observations have been going on since Galileo first turned his telesope on Saturn in 1610. Since it takes Saturn 29 Earth years to orbit the Sun, this longer time base is important for getting the seasonal context to interpret the spacecraft data. Also, ground-based observatories can use larger and heavier instruments than we can afford to fly to planets. This lets us use higher spectral resolution, or look at different wavelengths, to get detailed information about the composition of Saturn and its rings. The combination of ground-based and spacecraft is important.
There's one case where ground-based observations can rival spacecraft for the level of detail, and that's when a body passes in front of ("occults") a star. Early in the evening of November 14, I will be recording high-speed images of Saturn as it passes in front of a faint star. Watching the star wink in and out as it passes behind Saturn's rings will help us figure out their position, thickness, and structure. Wish me clear skies!