Overview

• Saturn reached opposition at 2 a.m. EDT on September 21, rising at sunset and remaining visible all night with peak viewing around local midnight.
• The planet sits in Pisces near the Circlet asterism, shining around magnitude 0.6 with a 19-arcsecond disk and rings stretching about 44 arcseconds.
• This year’s ring tilt is just about 1.7 degrees, creating a nearly edge-on appearance that won’t recur at this extreme for roughly another decade and a half.
• At opposition Saturn is about 1.28 billion kilometers from Earth, and the dark, new Moon sky enhances naked-eye viewing as well as telescopic detail.
• A Titan shadow transit crossed Saturn on September 20 for viewers in the Americas, and nearby Neptune reaches its own opposition on September 23; Saturn remains a prime evening target into early 2026, with small telescopes revealing the rings and moons like Titan, Rhea and Dione.