Overview

• Saturn reached opposition around 2 a.m. EDT on Sept. 21, putting Earth between the planet and the Sun and making it visible all night.
• The rings are tilted only about 1.7 degrees to our line of sight, so they appear as a very thin line despite the planet’s peak brightness.
• The planet rises at sunset, sits in Pisces near the Circlet asterism, and offers its steadiest views around local midnight under new-moon darkness.
• At opposition Saturn is roughly 1.28 billion kilometers from Earth (about 814 million miles), its closest approach of the year.
• Binoculars or small telescopes can reveal the disk and moons such as Titan, Rhea, and Dione; Neptune follows with its own opposition on Sept. 23, and Saturn remains well placed in the evening sky into early 2026.