If you’re not sure about angles, these hand shapes make it easier. Remember, the horizon is 0°, the zenith (directly overhead) is at 90°, and midway between the two is 45°. Start your viewing adventure by finding Saturn with your naked eyes, using the compass direction and the angle above the horizon provided by your map/software. It’s the fifth brightest object in the sky after the Moon, Venus, Jupiter and Mercury. Step 2 – Finding Saturn Without a TelescopeĪs we said earlier, Saturn is big and bright. Once you know that Saturn is visible and where to look, we need to find it. A free version, like Stellarium, will show you where to look, as will paid software like SkySafari 6. It spends the whole of 2022 in the constellation of Capricornus.įor a more detailed look at where to find the planet for your location at the time you will be observing, refer to night sky software. This year, Saturn passes behind the sun on 04 February so we can’t see the planet that month.Īfter that, the Ringed Planet is visible in mornings from March to June, all night long in July and August, and evenings from September until the end of the year. Like most celestial objects, Saturn spends part of the time unobservable because it is below the horizon during the hours of darkness, or above the horizon during daylight. Step 1 – Is Saturn in the Night Sky Tonight? Here’s our guide to getting the best from Saturn in your telescope this year. How To Find Saturn In A TelescopeĢ022 is a good year for Saturn-spotting, especially late summer and fall when the planet’s disc will be at its largest and brightest. See our detailed 2022 monthly calendar for Saturn, which opens in a new tab. At the end of the year, we can still see Saturn in the evenings but it has passed its best. The ringed planet finishes the year as an evening apparition, highest in the sky at 6pm in October. This is when Saturn is at its closest to us, so looks great in a telescope, and is visible all night long. Look for it in the east, always close to Jupiter – which is the brighter of the two planets. When it returns to darker skies, the ringed planet is visible in the morning before sunrise. The ringed gas giant is visible for most of 2022, other than January and February when it is too close to the Sun to be seen. We’ll talk more about that later in the article. If you take the rings into account, the magnitude varies from a faint +1.17 when the rings are the least inclined to a bright -0.55 when the rings are most inclined. The magnitude of Saturn’s disk varies from a dim +1.5 to a bright -0.2. Learn more about degrees, arcminutes, and arcseconds Saturn’s angular diameter ranges from 14.5″ to 20.1″, depending on how close to us it is. Water has a density of 1 g/cm 3 so Saturn would float if there was a water body big enough to hold it.Įven though Saturn’s average distance from the Sun is 890,424,928 miles (1,433,000,000 km), its large diameter means it’s big enough to be seen from Earth with the naked eye. While its mass is 95 times that of earth’s, Saturn’s density is only 0.69 g/cm3. In comparison, Earth’s diameter is only 3,963 miles (6,378 km), making Saturn more than 17 times bigger! It is slightly squashed and has a polar diameter of 67,560 miles (108,728 km), and an equatorial diameter of 74,898 miles (120,536 km). Saturn is the second-largest planet in our solar system. Saturn, 17x larger than Earth, but much less dense (NASA) If you own a scope of 6 inches or smaller, then keep reading to learn how to find the ringed planet and what you should aim to observe when you do. Seeing the planet Saturn through a telescope is one of the biggest pleasures available to backyard astronomers.
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