Saturn's 29.5-year orbit around the Sun will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 9.03 AU.
In practice, however, Saturn's orbit is very close to circular; its distance from the Sun only varies by about 11.5% between perihelion and aphelion. This means that the difference in the amount of heat and light it receives from the Sun between aphelion and perihelion is extremely small.
Finding Saturn
Saturn's distance from the Sun doesn't affect its appearance. From Fairfield, at the moment of perihelion it will be difficult to observe as it will appear no higher than 10° above the horizon. It will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:58 (EDT) – 1 hour and 37 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 10° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:03.
A chart of the path of Saturn across the sky in 2003 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.
The position of Saturn at the moment it passes perihelion will be:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| Saturn | 06h25m50s | 22°31'N | Gemini | 0.0 | 16.7" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 17 Jul 2024
| The sky on 17 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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84% 12 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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Source
The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.
Related news
| 22 Feb 2003 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 25 Oct 2003 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 31 Dec 2003 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 07 Mar 2004 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
Image credit
© NASA/Cassini