Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

This is Ephemeris for Friday, August 25th. Today the Sun will be up for 13 hours and 35 minutes, setting at 8:32, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:57. The Moon, 1 day past first quarter, will set at 12:57 tomorrow morning.

The planet Saturn will reach opposition on Sunday. That means it will be opposite the Sun in the sky. It will be rising as the sun sets, and it will then officially become an evening planet. Opposition is the time when Saturn is the closest it gets to the Earth, in this case it’s 816 million miles (1 billion 314 million kilometers). In telescopes, we’ll see very little in the way of shadows of the planet on the rings and the rings on the planet, because we are almost directly in line with the Sun and Saturn. We’re actually a little north of the line, so Saturn will exhibit very thin shadows, however a pretty big telescope will be needed to see them. This is the time when Saturn appears largest in telescopes, and the rings are the brightest.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT –4 hours). They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Saturn, as realized by the Stellarium planetarium app. It never appears this large in telescopes. The first time I saw Saturn in a telescope, and saw those rings, I was blown away. However, I was disappointed as to how small it was. Well, it is almost a billion miles (1.6 million kilometers) away, about twice as far as Jupiter. The extent of the rings are about as long as Jupiter’s apparent diameter, which averages about half of Saturn’s distance. Currently, the rings are getting more and more edge-on to us. The rings will be edge-on to us on March 23, 2025, nearly a year and a half from now, then begin to open up again. This is due to Saturn’s axial tilt of nearly 27 degrees, and the fact that the rings orbit the planet at its equator.