Space and Physics
PUBLISHED
If you are a lover of the night sky or simply curious about space, you have a great chance to see a Solar System icon this weekend. Saturn, the quintessential ringed planet, is going to be at its brightest and closest to our world on Sunday, October 4.
The sixth planet of the Solar System will be at opposition on Sunday. That doesn’t mean that Saturn is being a contrarian; a planet is in opposition when the Earth is between it and the Sun in its orbit.
This is the moment that the planet appears the brightest, as we see it at its most illuminated. And no, the Earth does not block the light. The angles of the orbits are close to each other but all a bit off, so the planets at opposition get their full faces illuminated. Just last week Neptune was at opposition.
How to see Saturn
Unlike Neptune, which requires a telescope or good binoculars to be seen, Saturn is easy to spot with your naked eye.
To find Saturn, look east in the hours after sunset, and it will slowly move west as the Earth rotates (it will be due south around 1 am).
Planets can be recognized in the sky because they do not twinkle like stars. Stars twinkle because they are so far away that they might as well be single point sources of light. The turbulence in Earth's atmosphere shifts their light.
Planets might look like point sources, but they are not; they are little disks. Their finite, albeit small, sizes end up canceling out the turbulence.
The gas giant planets in the Solar System go around the Sun a lot slower than the Earth, so the opposition happens almost every year. For Saturn, it happens every 374 days. So, in 2027, it will happen on October 18.
What else can I see in the night sky right now?
One week after its own opposition, Neptune is still pretty bright, and it is fairly close in the sky to Saturn, so if you do have the equipment, try to look for it. And if you are already getting the telescope out, try as well to look at galaxy NGC 7331. There is a supernova currently visible near its center.
Saturn will be visible even under light-polluted skies, in cities and such, but if you have a tad darker skies (or can get there), don't forget that one of the longest meteor showers has started already: the Southern Taurids. Also known as the Halloween fireballs, these meteors are not numerous, but they are bright.
The peak is expected to be the night of November 4 and November 5, which will be a good night for meteor watching as the Moon will be in its waning crescent. This weekend the Moon is also waning, but there’s a bit more illumination.
Also this month, the Draconids meteor shower will peak on October 9, and the Orionids, which come from Halley's Comet, peak on October 24
